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Reliant

Reliant was founded by a man named T L Williams in 1935, just before World War Two. His initial business plan was to simply take over the production of the successful Raleigh 3 which was a three wheel van. Production of this vehicle continued at Reliant until production was temporarily stopped due to WW2. It was powered by a 747cc engine from Austin and a three speed gearbox. After the war. A four seater was introduced to the Reliant range and in 1956, body work was switched to fibre glass.

Reliant went on to make low sports cars in the 1970s and 1980s. These were mainly four seater, however the rear seats were hardly worth mentioning. Convertibles were among the most favoured by the public and were quickly sold from Reliant dealers, as soon as they had arrived from production.

Reliant also built a four-wheeled version of the Reliant Robin who’s role in ‘Only Fools and Horses’ is still a popular symbol of the company at the time.

The company became masters in the art of making light-weight bodies from fibre glass and other composite materials. For that reason, they famously won a contract to make all the bodies for For RS200 Rally cars and bodies for London Cabs.

Reliant has provided designs to several other manufacturers, including Autocars in Israel and Otosan in Turkey in the 1960s, and MEBEA in Greece and Sipani in India in the 1970s

In 2001, after the company had long died away and its success was only a memory, a company by the name of B&N Plastics bought the rights to produce the Reliant Robin. There was an initial buzz of potential success of the venture, however this was short-lived as production ceased in 2002 after less than a year in production. Plans had been said to be in the works to begin to use the company name to import cars from far away area such as India which would be otherwise almost impossible to purchase in the UK. However despite Reliant’s second shot at success, these plans were scrapped and don’t seem to be coming back any time soon.