Reliant: A British Car Manufacturer
Reliant is a British car manufacturer founded in the year 1935 at Tamworth in Staffordshire, England. The company is famous for manufacturing sports cars (Reliant Scimitar) and three-wheeled economy cars Reliant Regal, Reliant Robin and Reliant Rialto.
T L Williams, the founder, started the company to take over manufacture of the Raleigh three-wheeler delivery van designed by him. The company moved on to make variants of the first vehicle, coming up with a replaced engine (manufactured by Reliant) in 1939, a four-seat car version in 1952 and a glass fibre body in the year 1956. The production using glass fibre helped them expand their exports, in particular, of ‘Anadol’. It was produced in Turkey, and over 100,000 cars were sold. Although their growth stifled during World War II, but their engineering expertise was used for war effort.
Reliant has provided design for many companies, including Autocars Ltd (Israel) and Otosan(Turkey) in 1960s and MEBEA (Greece) and Sipani Automobiles (India) in the 70s. Reliant Sabra, the sports car designed by the company for Autocars in the year 1960, was actually designed incorporating the Leslie Ballamy chassis and a modified Ashley 1172 body powered by a Ford Consul 1730cc engine. The car was manufactured for sale in America. It was a huge success in the US and lead Autocars to broaden its market to the UK as well. They changed it to a right hand drive model and renamed it ‘Sabre’, for the British. Two variants of Sabre, Sabre 4 and Sabre 6, were produced in the year 1961 and 62 respectively. In 1971, Autocars went into liquidation and thus ended the partnership between Autocars and Reliant.
Reliant Scimitar, another sports car manufactured by Reliant, has been the one model which was produced for a long time and with many variants. About 14 models were produced in the span of more than 25 years.
The company collaborated with Ford, Britain, for powerful engines for Scimitar and Sabre. Later on, Reliant absorbed Bond cars, a three-wheeler car manufacturer. They used the Bond name for the iconic three-wheeler sporty car of 1970s, Bond Bug.
Regal and Robin got its four-wheeler version built – Reliant Rebel and Reliant Kitten, in 1965 and 1975 respectively. The Kitten was superseded by Reliant Fox, a utility/pickup vehicle, was produced between 1983 and 1990. This was based on a model by Greek company MEBEA and was jointly produced by both the companies. A small three-wheeled commercial vehicle, Reliant TW9, was also produced by the company. It was later sold by other companies as Ant; to which a custom rear body was attached used by public utility companies. Production rights for Reliant Robin was sold in 2001 to Sudbury-based B&N Plastics, but the production was ceased in 2002.
The company’s expertise in composite car body production helped it produce lightweight body shells for Ford RS200 rally cars and MetroCab, a glass fibre-bodied taxi, which even had a full wheelchair provision.
Reliant mostly used the engines produced by other companies. But later, Reliant’s own engines started being used as a replacement for the Austin 7 engine in Formula 750 motor sport by the 750 Motor Club.
In 1988, the company was acquired by Beans industries, and again went into receivership in the year 1994. Reliant is owned by Glen Investments now and is working in collaboration with Piaggio and Ligier to distribute each other’s products.
- Devu Narayanan
Tags: cars, reliant, reliant cars, reliant sports cars, sports car, sports cars
Related Posts:Related Posts
Leave a Comment
