FOREIGN AFFAIR
1977 RELIANT SCIMITAR GTE
I know that my Scimitar GTE looks stunning in the soft glow of a summer evening because I spent several hours in laybys – and eventually, the infinitely preferable surroundings of a Surrey beer garden – staring at the stricken car on the way back from this year’s London to Brighton Classic Car Run.
Has that dented my affections for Tamworth’s V6-engined shooting brake? Not a bit of it – VMA 40R has won a long-term spot in the Simister fleet
– not bad at all for a classic that I effectively bought unseen, over the internet, while I was abroad.
I spent months scouring the classifieds for Scimitars and test-driving both SE5s and SE6s before this SE6a popped up in the catalogue for Brightwells’ Bicester sale back in April. It looked like it had already had plenty of love, including neat upgrades already lavished on it by its devoted previous owners, but there was just one snag – I’d be at the Techno Classica show in Essen, Germany, when the sale happened. If I was going to be making a bid, I’d be doing it without having seen the car first.
So I dispatched CCW’s resident auction gurus – Messrs. Barnett and Hudson-Evans – to inspect the car beforehand, setting a maximum bid ahead of the big day. It was a bit of a leap of faith, but eventually the phone rang – the car was mine, comfortably beneath my maximum bid.
Since then, and it cutting out after the London to Brighton event, I’ve had the car serviced, replaced the cherry bomb exhaust with a stainless steel one and invested in some new fuelling and ignition components, and it’s run far sweeter since.
All I need to do now is take it to some more shows. So far it’s visited just two, which isn’t nearly enough…