ON THE ROAD AGAIN
David’s three-wheeled buy is on the move again – but still not under its own power. At least he now knows what he’s up against
THE STORY SO FAR Miles driven 95 (on the back of a trailer) Total mileage 63,781 What’s gone wrong It only moves when it’s on a trailer attached to a Range Rover
DAVID SIMISTER It’s a pity our Reliant hasn’t got the ability to write to us directly about its adventures, because we’d be building up a great collection of locales perfect for whenever the writers of Boring Postcards opt to publish a follow-up.
Since the New Year the £600 Robin has been on an epic voyage encompassing a snow-covered Oldham, a garage not far from St Helens and – perhaps most glamorously of all – the dazzling lights of Hall Five at the NEC in Birmingham, and all without its 848cc four ever throbbing into life. Which I’m sort of glad about, given that at the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show, with Discovery I learned that its front crossmember was ‘a couple of speed bumps away’ from collapsing.
I spent the first night of the show pondering over a pint in one of the NEC’s many restaurants whether to push H362 CBA into a nearby lake and quietly pretend I hadn’t bought a broken Robin, but happily the Reliant Owners’ Club’s trio of experts – father and son Melvin and Adam Turpin, plus Rialto devotee Pete Huggins – helped persuade me that there’s life yet in our 1990 Robin. It also encouraged me enormously that so many of you visited the stand and – once you’d finished gasping with shock at the corrosion – reckoned it’s worth carrying on with the car.
Which is how the car’s post-NEC destination was changed to the Cambridgeshire fens to spend a bit of time with club expert James Holland. He was one of the experts who’d already helped our sister magazine Practical Classics with its resurrection of the Only Fools and
Horses Supervan III on the resto show’s live stage two years ago, and having given our car’s chassis the once-over he reckoned it’d be easier to source and paint a replacement chassis than banish the tin worm from our rather war-torn example.
On the show’s closing afternoon the GRP body was lifted back up again and bolted onto the chassis, but this time only for the sake of making sure that it wouldn’t attempt to undress itself while we were halfway down the A14 – the auxiliary components were left disconnected, and the bits
‘I pondered whether to push H362 CBA into a nearby lake’
removed and locked safely away in the boot.
The team from CBR Motor Bodies – who’d also helped Practical
Classics with the show’s star restoration, a Citroën 2CV – backed a trailer towards the stand, loaded the pesky three-wheeler up and set off for Wisbech, 95 miles away. The Robin’s next journey would be one towed by a Range Rover, under cover of darkness – not that I had any ideas of driving it away from the NEC under its own steam, of course!
I’m happy to report that the Robin landed safely at the other end and is now under James’ watchful eye, with plans now afoot to snap up a decent secondhand chassis. I wonder if they do postcards in Wisbech?