20 Reliant Scimitar GTE
The GTE makes it to Madeira Drive, but getting home again is a nightmare
The Scimitar has been on an epic 12-hour journey – just not the one that I was expecting.
Before I get to that, however, a couple of you got in touch after I snapped it up ( CCW, 22
May), but one letter, from former owner Keith Wolton, particularly piqued my interest. He and his wife treated VMA to many of its current upgrades between 1987 and 2005 and used it on several adventures over 15,000 miles of driving, including taking it to the French Alps back in the late 1990s.
Being more than happy to continue this fine classic tradition, I booked the car in for this year’s London to Brighton Classic Car Run ( CCW, 5
June) – only for it to cut out during a Sunday afternoon drive. The diagnosis was that the alternator wasn’t charging when auxiliary components were switched on, so I ordered a 70-amp Lucas 127A alternator to replace the old 65-amp one and it was back up and running a few days later, ready for its first big run in my ownership. It made short work of the cruise down the M11 and even coped with 40 minutes of stop-start traffic in 27-degree heat near the Blackwall Tunnel en-route to our overnight stop in Greenwich; clearly the Kenlowe fan was doing its job properly. We arrived at Greenwich Park the following day ready for the 65-mile run to Brighton and parked up alongside Adrian Marriot’s 1975 Jensen-Healey before signing in for the run. It turned out that VMA wasn’t the only Scimitar taking part, either – I bumped into Graham Florence, who had driven his rather lovely 1967 SE4 all the way up from Woking.
The Scimitar was spot on all the way to the halfway point at Chiddingstone Castle, deep in the Kent countryside, but then disaster struck on the same stretch of the South Downs where my Mazda Eunos Roadster’s radiator infamously – not to mention uncharacteristically – started playing up on the 2018 run.
Overheating didn’t seem to be the issue on this occasion – the engine was, in fact, keeping its cool, as demonstrated by the needle on the water temperature gauge sticking firmly to the halfway point – but it was idling erratically and occasionally misfiring as we joined the queues of traffic snaking their way into Brighton.
It made it to the finish point on Madeira Drive, but what the crowds peering into its engine bay didn’t realise was that the bonnet was raised, not so that they could take pictures of the its three-litre V6, but so that the crisp sea breeze could cool the auxiliary components down.
The run back was even worse. It would run perfectly whenever the road opened up, but the lumpy running returned as soon as we hit traffic. It finally picked its moment to expire after a particularly long stretch of roadworks at the end of the M23, cutting out completely on a slip road where drivers join the M25. Cue a call to the AA. I needed help – and fast.
It fell to Highways England to come to our initial rescue because the GTE had broken down in a set of roadworks; they arrived an hour later to move us off the motorway and into the nearby village of Godstone. One of the AA’s own breakdown vans arrived 90 minutes later, but unsurprisingly, the technician couldn’t diagnose what was causing the poor running because it had had hours to cool down by this point. As such, the AA promptly dispatched a recovery truck to run the stricken Reliant home – it would, we were assured, be with us within two hours.
We duly retreated to a nearby pub so I could write up the report and sort through my photos for that week’s CCW – well, I did have two hours to kill – and another recovery truck did indeed finally arrive. So, we would finally be heading home, then, yes? Er, no; we’d be taken as far as Cambridge Services on the A14, where we’d be met by…another truck.
I did a bit of online investigation into VMA’s woes on the long journey north and a consensus quickly emerged that the cause was probably something on the ignition side of things playing up as a result of a build-up of heat under the bonnet; this would at least explain why it ran perfectly as soon as it cooled down.
That, however, is another story for another Our Classics adventure. For now we had been relegated to a truck that spent an hour in the early hours
getting hopelessly lost in another set of roadworks – this time on the M11.
We finally pulled into Cambridge Services at 2.45am – only to be told by the driver of the second recovery truck that he had to take a 45-minute break. I’m sure that many high points with the GTE await me in the future, but spending three quarters of an hour at a deserted service station with a stranded car certainly won’t be one of them.
We were finally delivered back to Lincolnshire at 5am – nearly 12 hours after the car had initially failed to proceed on the M23; it should have taken us just three. And obviously, the GTE started perfectly when I set about nursing it into my garage.
I was proud that it made it to Madeira Drive, but utterly deflated at how long it had taken us to get home again. There would be plenty of opportunity to get the car’s poor running sorted (more on which in a future issue), but for now it was me that needed the TLC.
I’ve never been so pleased to see my own bed…