Reliant — Britain's Three-Wheeler Maker That Also Built a Royal GT

Reliant at a glance

Origins: a van built in a Tamworth garden

In 1934 Raleigh stopped making three-wheelers. Its works manager T. L. Williams and his colleague E. S. Thompson decided to build their own, and the prototype was put together in Williams's back garden in Tamworth. It was a van with a 600 cc single-cylinder J.A.P. engine and a weight of 356 kg, and it was licensed in January 1935. The first Reliant was delivered on 3 June 1935, and the company soon moved to a disused bus depot in Fazeley.

A water-cooled two-cylinder J.A.P. engine followed in March 1936. On 12 March 1938 Reliant delivered its first four-cylinder vehicle, with a 747 cc side-valve engine of 7.8 kW (10.5 hp) derived from the Austin Seven; when Austin stopped making that engine, Reliant bought the tooling and the rights. During the Second World War the factory machined parts for the war effort, and on 13 March 1946 it completed the first post-war Regent van.

Regal, fibreglass and the aluminium engine

Reliant moved into passenger cars in 1952 with a four-seat three-wheeler with an aluminium body, and in 1953 the Regal arrived. The Mk III Regal of 1956 was the first with an all-fibreglass body, and the 750 cc engine was reworked to 13.0 kW (17.5 hp). In 1962 the Hodge Group bought a majority of the company, and side-valve engine production ended.

The Regal 3/25 of 1962–1963 introduced a new engine: an overhead-valve four of 598 cc and 18 kW (24 bhp), made entirely of aluminium alloy and reverse-engineered from the 803 cc Standard Eight engine. It was the first mass-produced aluminium-alloy overhead-valve engine. The body was now a unitary fibreglass shell bonded and bolted to a steel chassis, and the car weighed 445 kg, which gave about 40 W per kg; the power-to-weight calculator makes the same comparison for any car. The 50,000th Regal 3/25 left the line on 25 April 1968, and the later 3/30 had a 701 cc engine with 22 kW (29 bhp). The Supervan III van version became famous as Del Boy's yellow van in the comedy series Only Fools and Horses.

In the early 1960s Reliant also designed vehicles for other countries: for Israel, sold there by Autocars as the Sussita and Carmel, and for Turkey, where the Anadol used a fibreglass body, a separate chassis and Ford running gear.

Scimitar: the sports car side

The Scimitar GT coupé of 1964 had styling based on the Ogle SX250 by David Ogle and a 2.6-litre Ford straight-six of 89 kW (120 bhp), later Ford Essex V6 engines of 3.0 and 2.5 litres. About 1,000 coupés were built until November 1970.

Its successor made a bigger mark. Tom Karen of Ogle designed the Scimitar GTE, a four-seat sports estate with a hatchback, launched at the 1968 Motor Show with the 3.0-litre Essex V6. The SE5A of 1972 reached 195 km/h, and 4,311 SE5 and 5,105 SE5A cars were built, making the SE5A the best-selling Scimitar. In November 1970 Princess Anne received an SE5 as a 20th-birthday and Christmas present from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh; she later owned eight more GTEs. The longer, more luxurious SE6 of 1976 had 101 kW (135 bhp), and the GTC convertible of 1980 (442 built) used a 2.8-litre Ford Cologne V6. Production of the GTE ended in 1986.

Bond, the Bug and the Robin

In 1969 Reliant bought Bond Cars after that company's liquidation. The Bond Bug of 1970–1974, a wedge-shaped three-wheeler designed by Tom Karen of Ogle, used Reliant's 700 cc engine with 22 kW (29 bhp); 2,270 were built.

The Robin replaced the Regal in October 1973. Its engine grew from 750 cc to 850 cc in 1975, and the fibreglass body made it, after the Chevrolet Corvette, the second most popular fibreglass car in history. Its official weight was below 450 kg, and in the United Kingdom it is classed as a category A motorcycle vehicle. The four-wheeled Kitten of 1975–1982 used the same 850 cc engine, and its rights were later sold to Sipani in India. The Fox utility vehicle was built in Greece by MEBEA from 1979 to 1983 and by Reliant from 1982 to 1990, and the Rialto three-wheeler ran from 1982 to 1997.

Changing owners and the end of production

Reliant was sold to J.F. Nash Securities in the late 1970s. In the early 1990s its owner, a housing developer, was hit by the 1992 recession; the company folded and was sold to Beans Engineering. Under Jonathan Haynes from 1996 sales reportedly doubled, and in 1997 production moved to Plant Lane in Burntwood. The Robin was revived in 1989 with a hatchback body and redesigned again in 1999 by Andy Plumb.

In 2001 Reliant stopped making its own models, after building about 50 vehicles a week, and turned to importing Ligier microcars and Piaggio Ape vans. The last Robin 65 limited edition sold for £10,000 in the United Kingdom in 2001. B&N Plastics then bought the Robin rights and built the BN-1 Robin from July 2001, but it built only about 40 complete cars before production ended in October 2002. The company became Reliant Partsworld, the original Tamworth site became the Scimitar Park housing estate, and on 8 July 2017 a blue plaque was unveiled to Williams and Thompson. The vehicles are listed in the Reliant catalogue, the Reliant Robin article covers the best-known model, and the brands timeline places Reliant among other British makes.

Reliant timeline

Landmark Reliant models

Photo gallery