13 Jul 01
Reliant of Tamworth, England is best known for its three-wheeler economy cars and the much more upmarket Scimitar GTE but, for a while in the '80s, it tried to break into the cheap sports-car market with the Scimitar SS1.
Seeing a gap in the market left by the demise of the Triumph Spitfire and MG Midget, Reliant hired Italian stylist Michelotti to design a two-seater glassfibre sports-car body for its steel chassis. Power was to come from the Ford Escort (either the standard version or the XR3) and there were many proprietary components in the chassis, such as the semi-trailing-arm rear suspension lifted from the Ford Sierra.
It sounded like a recipe for success but the car was let down by its styling, which was gawky and badly proportioned: Giovanni Michelotti died before completing the design, and it showed. There were complaints about the performance, too, but that was easily solved by fitting Nissan's 135 bhp Silvia Turbo engine. Thus equipped, the car was extremely rapid - 0-60 mph took 6.9 seconds - and, for a while, interest in the SS1 increased. Production was down to a trickle again, however, by the time Reliant was taken over by Beans Industries. An attempt was made to revive the design with a restyled car called the Scimitar Sabre, but only a handful were made.
