As much design as a Porsche

Reliant designer Andy Plumb has restored his rare Robin

MY RELIANT ROBIN was buried deep in Wales. It popped up on eBay in 2014 and was cheap. I bought it sight unseen with a month’s MoT and it was in quite a state when I drove it home: leaves in the headlining, and the metal bits all looked as though they had been down with the Titanic, even the galvanised chassis. The perfect basis for my first restoration.

Importantly, the body was undamaged. This shape is rare and the panels are unique, so parts are difficult to source. It was ‘British Racing Green’ and the poshest one – an SLX – but all the posh bits had rusted or fallen off. It was roadworthy, though I ran it off the road during a commute from Hereford to Longbridge, where I was working for MG at the time. I had a few run-ins with people because they just didn’t see it – the dark green paintwork made it blend in with bushes – and then I blew the head gasket at 80mph in the middle lane of the M40.

I wanted to restore as much of the Reliant as possible myself. I stripped it down on my driveway in a silver car tent that was meant to be anchored down – it tried to fly off in a storm and was only prevented from doing so by my wife hanging on to it. She broke her wedding ring in the process, so there are diamonds in our gravel somewhere.

I got the engine, gearbox and axle rebuilt by professionals. Composite bodies are timeconsuming and difficult to spray well so I got professionals to do that, too – although I did the prep myself. Porting and blueprinting the engine, which breathes out through a fourinto-one big-bore exhaust, means I’m expecting a 10bhp increase – that’s 20%!

The chassis, although galvanised at the factory, was scrap, so I bought a new one, and all the parts were swapped or added on my driveway. The lowest point was getting the electrics to work, especially since one garage had caused a minor fire. It’s now a little more noticeable on the road, in a shade of orange that’s a tongue-in-cheek nod to McLaren.

Three-wheelers are actually quite sporty and my Reliant can pull an overtake or two. It struggles over speed bumps: you can straddle them with a four-wheeler but whichever way you try in a Reliant, it goes wrong.

I joined Reliant as a designer in 1997. The moulds for the Robin Mk2 were tired and they made a decision to facelift, and my project was to redesign it. My book, Tipping Point – Designing a Great British Underdog, has been years in the making. I had photos and sketches from my original three- and four-wheeler design studies at Reliant and, although there are many good books out there, none approaches the Robin as a design exercise. I would never claim the Reliant is perfect but I would perhaps change the bonnet shutline, or make the tailgate clamshell as was intended.

Culturally, these cars are iconic, but thanks to their lowliness they have been banger-raced or scrapped, so there aren’t many left. I hope I can shed some light on the fact that these mundane vehicles took just as much design work as a Porsche. And they can be fun to own in a unique way. Classic cars aren’t about impressing other people, they are about being individual. There would be a lot of engineering costs but if I had to make it electric to keep it, I think I would.