Reliant Robin fans defend car Clarkson branded plastic pig 25 years since it was scrapped

Twenty-five years ago, a quirky British car rolled off the production line for the last time. The Reliant Robin enjoyed an astonishing 25 years of on-sale popularity – and notoriety – as the country’s favourite three-wheeled vehicle. Owners loved the Robin’s penny-pinching running costs, but ardent devotees endured constant mickey-taking from the likes of BBC Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson, for driving a “plastic pig.” Yet despite ceasing production in 2001, the Robin still has many fans. Its roots are in 1935 Staffordshire where, working in a disused Tamworth bus garage, motorcycle engineer Tom Williams produced his first Reliant three-wheeled van. Little more than a metal box with a motorbike front wheel sticking out, at just £84, it proved irresistible to thousands of sole traders, for being useful and cheap to run. In 1953, Tom launched his first passenger car, the £362 Reliant Regal. Powered by a four-cylinder engine he manufactured himself, it could take two adults and two small children in the back. While lacking luxury, it gave dependable family motoring with a tiny thirst for petrol. In 1956, a MkIII version introduced a saloon body made from a new, lightweight ‘wonder’ material - glassfibre. Like all Reliant three-wheelers, the unladen weight was not allowed to exceed 8cwt, - just over 406kg. Despite its normal steering wheel and four seats, the Reliant hid a guilty secret - it wasn’t legally a car at all. It was a ‘tricycle’, meaning owners only had to pay motorcycle road tax, and a Reliant could be driven on a motorbike licence. Thousands of former bikers – once they’d married and had children – could upgrade to something more practical without taking a car driving test… or wearing crash helmets. That was a very attractive proposition in the 1950s, and sales boomed. Reliant’s success continued throughout the 1960s, with its later Regal 3/25 selling over 100,000 examples. The Robin became the Regal’s successor in 1973, now with a stylish new look and a glass hatchback. With a cost of living crisis similar to today’s, the £801 Robin made perfect sense, because it could eke out a gallon of petrol over 70 miles at a steady 40mph. There was one less tyre to replace, and the motorcycle tax benefit continued. One unlikely celebrity owner was Princess Anne, who used a Robin around her country estate in Gloucestershire. However, despite a roaring start to sales, a 1978 scandal knocked the Robin off its perch. Driven carefully, there was little chance the car would tip over. But the Robin’s steering could develop a defect where bolts fell out and it would be uncontrollable. Exposure in the Consumer Association’s Which? magazine and on the BBC’s That’s Life programme was terrible publicity and customers shied away. The car was renamed the Rialto in 1982. The company still sold 40 cars a week. But it was a shadow of the Robin’s 1970s weekly peak of 330. The Robin name was resurrected in 1989. And the three-wheelers motored on until 2001. Then, after several bankruptcies, the Reliant name was dead. When writing a book about the Reliant Robin’s history, I met the man who created its neat original styling, industrial designer Tom Karen, who at 89 regarded it fondly. “I am quite proud of that car,” he said. “There was no point in being dishonest, in design terms, about the fact it was a three-wheeler. Even though it's a four-seater with a four-cylinder engine, it still had to weigh less than 8cwt. And this required a lot of innovation. “The glass hatchback was my idea. It was a neat design and, because it used flat glass, it was very inexpensive to make. With Reliant, everything had to be the cheapest item they could get hold of, but that was part of the challenge.” I decided to take the plunge and buy one myself, finding a 1992 Robin on an on-line sales website and getting it for £150. Because the keys had been lost, I never managed to get it started. However, over a few weekends of cleaning it up, I came to admire and dislike it in equal measure. There was real ingenuity in the way all its fittings, such as the wafer-thin seats and a single windscreen wiper, were used to keep it within its legal weight limit. On the other hand, it would have been uncomfortable for anything other than a trip to the local shops. And as the bodyshell was little different from a large margarine tub, the thought of even a minor accident gave me shivers. After a few months in my garage, I sold it for £400. Among the dozens of classic cars I’ve owned, it’s the only one that ever gave me a profit! Elvis Payne, founder of the Reliant Motor Club, which celebrates turning 10 this year and has members worldwide, says the cars can now be worth £2,000-2,500 if in good condition. He explains: “I’ve had several and it definitely is a practical car for everyday use. There are a few thousand of them on the road still. However, I think it helps to be good at DIY, because you do need to tweak them to keep them going.” Sadly, the Robin disappeared in 2001 because it had become too expensive, costing up to £10,000 per car. Elvis says: “It was built by hand and the company couldn’t make the cars at a price people could afford. Also, the actual customer market was shrinking. "The 70mpg fuel economy wasn’t an advantage any longer. Most normal cars can easily do that these days. Unfortunately, I think its time is over, especially with the surge in electric microcars today.” But car designer Andy Plumb, who was hired to give the Robin a final, comprehensive restyle in the late 1990s, and has also worked on three-wheeled sports cars for Morgan, thinks a back-to-basics Reliant could now have a bright future. He says: “The original Robin was a masterpiece of product design. It featured many interesting and cutting-edge features. The two categories of three-wheeler layouts are incredibly capable in their own right. The ‘Tadpole’ layout of the Morgan is sporty and dynamic with its single wheel at the back, while the ‘Delta’ layout of the Reliant, with single wheel at the front ,is very practical. “This is why I believe a new Robin would be relevant in today's society, going back to its roots as a local or ‘last-mile’ delivery van, rather than being a family car.” Only Fools... Britain’s most famous Reliant is the yellow van featured in BBC1 sitcom Only Fools & Horses, starring David Jason as south London hustler Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter. But calling it a Robin is one of the most frequently repeated wrongs about any classic vehicle. The Trotter family’s van was not a Robin. It was a Reliant Supervan - derived from the earlier Regal 3/25 car. A genuine Robin, however, frequently appeared in Rowan Atkinson’s sitcom Mr Bean, where it was shown hindering the progress of Bean’s green Mini. Another Robin van appeared in the 2015 movie The Lady In The Van, starring Maggie Smith. The eccentric pensioner lived in an old Bedford van in writer Alan Bennett’s drive, but used a Robin as her runaround.