Finding Out if Top Gear Was Wrong About These

having two people in the car actually helps it to not flip over

Fun fact. Clarkson is on record for saying that he regretted the section on the Robin. When they left the BBC and moved to Amazon they bought Robins for use in London as they are exempt from the various taxes implemented on the roads. Clarkson really liked his Robin as a runabout in London. And kept it for sometime after the others had been moved on.

The fact that Clarkson was alone and going down a very steep slope into flat turning probably helped a lot (along with the modification the production had made)

The main success of the Reliant, as you mentioned, was the fact you could drive it on a motorcycle licence and did not have to take the more arduous car driving test. Lightweight fibreglass body also meant they were quite economical for its time. My mate had a Reliant Regal, only 700cc I believe and it did about 60mpg (UK gallon mind...) - I remember it taking off on a humpback bridge - one day we parked it up and a van took out the right hand side - we drove it home with no door and the roof hanging down, not a problem as it had a proper chassis. In the wet, you could "power" slide it round roundabouts. We lived to tell the tale....

Imagine a High Low series on cars like these

Justin’s really come a long way in a year with Donut, mad respect for all the segments he’s been in lately.

I do like that you were able to appreciate the car for what it was meant to be (a cheap transportation device) and not just make fun of it all along. For the production numbers, it should be noted that Reliant made several other vehicles beside 3 wheelers and was at some point the second-largest British car manufacturer. One of their othe famous car was the Reliant Scimitar, a sports (yes) car that came with a 4 banger or a V6. Because they used fiberglass early for making their cars lighter, they had partnership with Ford of Britain to make fiberglass body parts for Ford. They also helped design car for an Israeli company and also designed the Anadol, a Turkish car that was produced for 20 years. The nail in Reilant's three wheelers market was that the specific provision for licence that allowed to drive their 3 wheelers with a motorcycle licence was removed, thus making their 3 wheelers cars requiring a regular driving licence.

Fun fact; the Reliant Robin was also used as the chassis for Luke's Landspeeder.

The clip of Jeremy flipping and then sliding in the Reliant Robin is one of my favourite top gear moments of all time, always makes me smile 😂

Respect to the dude who sacrificed his reliant

Actually the episode where they turned a Reliant robin into a space shuttle was one of the most epic things I've ever seen. I believe at the time if it had sucessfully separated and landed the Robin they would've qualified for the X prize.

10:15 how when it started leaking they called that segment “WRX”😂

Wow what a cool owner. He didn’t seem to be upset that you wrecked his car. I bet these robin cars are pretty rare in the United States. Great video.

My theory for the differential is that they welded it. With an open differential, once your car starts to flip over and one tire gets into the air it will get all the power. Therefore the car will lose speed which often is enough to stop it from flipping over. If it's welded then you can keep adding gas as you're flipping which therefore lets the car keep tipping. I've learnt this from playing around in BeamNG lmao

I'm from Tamworth (Wilnecote actually) originally. Reliants were built in Two Gates just a smidge down the old Roman Road (Watling Street) My dad was a skilled machinist working in aerospace and was lured to Southern California in 1968 as machinists were in short supply. A lot of my relatives worked in the mines. My dad had the choice of being drafted or working in the mines. After 2 weeks in the mines, the Army sounded safer. He also did a similarly short stint at Reliant . . . something about his fist and the boss's chin. Laying up fiberglass will do that to a person. Yep Reliants were pretty common there in the 60's. They were taxed and licensed as motorcycles and you only needed a MC drivers license. We were an exception. My mother drove, had her own car, an ancient Ford Prefect with the turn indicators that flipped out the sides of the car while "the family car" was an Austin Mini (of course, as you do as a family of 4). You have to try really hard to flip a Mini . . .

A few missteps here. One, the Robin wasn't made specifically for miners, nor was it marketed specifically local to Tamworth. Remember that the UK is about twice the size of Pennsylvania. Most US States are about the size of an entire European COUNTRY. Distances mean something very different here, Stateside, from what they do "across the pond". The Reliant Robin was built specifically to take advantage of the UK's then-existent loophole in the drivers' licensing laws of their era, which really were created post-WW2 with the idea in mind of a motorcycle with a sidecar. Their main competitor was Bond Cars Ltd which made the (in)famous Bond Minicar for the same purpose. Eventually, Reliant absorbed Bond, which led to the release of the Bond Bug in the mid-1970s, using a Robin chassis but a vastly different body, as a bit of a raspberry to the losing Marque (US: Badge), by way of a send-off. Both companies were suffering at the time, as the loophole they'd built the lucrative side of their business around had closed in the very early 1970s, cutting off their cashflow by essentially cutting the bottom out of the market. Also worthy of note, the Robin predated the Regal. It was one of those things where the Regal was brought in as the Robin-but-much-better-and-newer, but the Robin name was so well-known, vs the then-unknown Regal, that they brought the Robin back because that's what people actually bought. Remember how Ford, here in the US, tried to replace the Taurus with the Five Hundred, and how that went? Same thing. FWIW, been to the UK a few times as a tourist and fell in love with the place. My heart will forever pine for a flat in London...

They locked the rear diff. The secret to the robin is the open rear diff. As you start to roll, the inside rear tire comes off the ground and 99% of the time the power loss to the wheel on the ground was enough to slow the car to a safe speed for the corner. If you try REALLY hard, you can roll one with a stock, open rear diff, however once you lock the rear diff, both tires have power all the time so you can maintain corner speed and even accelerate through a corner.

The 3 wheelers aren’t all that reliant made, they also made some very sleek sports cars. The reliant scimitar was one of their models that started as a coupe and ended as a gte. Princess Anne went though about 8 of them over time before they went bust and was taken on by middle bridge. I own a 1974 reliant scimitar se5a and it’s truly a fantastic car, the Essex 3.0 v6 pulls really well and the car handles really well for something from 74.

Aw, I grew up with these cars. My dad was an ex-biker who "upgraded" to Reliants when he started a family. They are nippy enough around town, with 848cc and half the weight of a Fiesta. My dad always drove fast but carefully and never lifted a wheel. I vividly remember coming back from holiday up the motorway, family of four and our luggage in the back, 80mph all the way. Exciting, and hilarious seeing the faces of people in the "four-wheelers" we passed... That was a gleaming white one too, but we always had the estate ("wagon") versions. Then there was the day we raced the train... Anyhoo, thank you for bringing back some epic memories!

Driving a 3 wheel car on a mountain is outright max confidence