Rebellious Attitude

One of my cars is giving me grief, it's a Reliant *****. Before I get any more grief about it, no, it isn't the Sabre, it has a 700cc engine, and no, it doesn't have three wheels, it has four. It's a R****. And it's caused me to miss the Zeals Autotest because of a blown head gasket, (the engine, not me).

This all started last November (2002), when I was driving 50 miles between home and a dairy, from whence I was hurtling through the darkness delivering wholesale milk to nursing homes and corner shops. A part-time job, supposedly 5 hours a day 6 days a week, allowing me to keep the Scimitar parts business going during daylight hours. The trouble was the petrol bill for a Scimitar for that distance took 2 of those 5 hours and threw the money straight out of the tailpipes as smoke.

Maybe not all of it started with the milk round, some of the desire for a small nimble car has roots in the dusty weeds of Zeals Airfield, where both Ted Howles and I have struggled to muscle large unwieldy plastic pigs around tight and twisty circuits designed to make minis feel uncomfortable. I had been looking for something small to compete in, and had been thinking along the lines of a Fiat Topolino or Jardiniere, or maybe even a 126 if they were tax-exempt. One of my customers mentioned he had a Reliant Rebel, and I started a search on the web to find out more about this Tamworth curiosity.

It was a David Ogle design, who started with the Ogle Mini, and ultimately designed the Scimitar Coupe, before being killed in a road accident on the way to Brands Hatch to race. Looking at the Rebel, one can see the prominent front wing line that is still present not only in the Coupe, but also in the subsequent GTE's. Reliant produced about 2000 of the Rebels between the mid sixties and early seventies, the majority being small saloons, and a few estates. They used their own all-aluminium 700cc engine and gearbox, and the back axle from the three-wheelers.