Fantasy Reliant Museum

[Coupe Racing]

How about the RS200 and the London Taxi

[drcdb15]

Depends how wide you want to cast the net - the 750 Formula was originally built around Austin 7 engines, but when they became too old and valuable, they changed to using Reliant engines. They've now moved on to Fiats (presumably with the disappearance of Reliant). Reliant engined ones still race in historic series

That's fair enough - after all, if we can consider the engines used as water pumps for the fireservice then use in a race car is even more apposite. I think the point of this museum is not only to preserve the Reliant cars that no-one else seems to be bothered about (save for the token Scimitars and Regals scattered around) but to educate and underscore the point Elvis Payne makes in his book The Reliant Motor Company: this little back-street tin pot firm that everyone laughs about and pokes fun at was actually not only very important as an employer for the locality for decades, but was in fact a serious player in a huge pool of multinational firms, and punched massively disproportionately above its weight. Just think of the names that got involved with Reliant over the years - Ford, Jaguar, the royal family, Triplex/Pilkington, Standard Triumph, SAAB, even GM, William Towns/Aston Martin, and of course Karen/Ogle - serious and reputable firms. Nobody laughed at *them*, and they didn't laugh at Reliant. But the wider public, and I believe even within the motoring world, has virtually no appreciation of this at all, nor of the features we all take so much for granted today that had their roots wholly or partially in the creativity and ingenuity of the people in Reliant. One simple example - a volume production all-alloy car engine. How many motoring 'experts' know where the first one was made?

[Corky]

http://www.scimitarweb.co.uk/sgwrs/view ... hp?t=37908

This would’ve made a nice exhibit.

[Roger Pennington]

but was in fact a serious player in a huge pool of multinational firms

This is a point I've been making for a long time - that to read posts on here and elsewhere, you'd think that Reliant were a couple of men in a shed, bashing away, and pushing out an occasional car, built from scavenged parts, every month or so. In fact, the reality, if you look at the production figures, is that during the whole of the seventies, they were producing on average about 23 cars per week, every week, for the entire decade. While it may be somewhat less than someone like Ford, nevertheless, it's a serious effort and something that we (and they) should be proud of.