The Reliant Scimitar SS1
Hankering back to my Spitfire "wind in the hair" (what hair?) motoring days, I saved a bit, sold my Herald and bought a Reliant Scimitar SS1.
Reliant, so people say, blew it with this car. They had the sports car market wide open but missed an opportunity to clean up by making something that was slow, ugly and badly put together.
Oh yeah? True, the 1300 was not particularly fast, but it did offer entry-level sports car motoring and was fun to drive.
The 1600 had an XR3 engine and had good performance by anybody with a normal amount of money's standards. Unfortunately, spoiled road testers used to more exotic machinery didn't like it.
Ugly? From some angles my SS1 looks like a Star Wars trooper's suit of armour but from others it's gorgeous. It always passes the "turns small boys' heads" test and I have yet to see anyone throw up in a bush as I pass. It was designed by Michelotti, who also designed the Spitfire. So why did it turn out the way it did? I can just hear the people at Reliant briefing him: "For goodness' sake, Michelotti... don't come up with anything they can call a 'hairdresser's car'".
I'm rapidly learning how it's put together because I've had to strip mine right down. One day I was jacking it up to change a wheel. The jack went up and the car didn't. Not only was the jacking point corroded, the sills were away too. Someone's going to weld on new ones for me (galvanised, as the entire chassis was on later SS1s). I'll put information about this on the site when it's done.
In my opinion, Reliant made a great little sports car when it produced the SS1. Perhaps the problem was that the image-obsessed, designer-wearing, hot-hatch eighties didn't deserve it!
A
Scimitar SS1. To drive it is to love it, but don't think your
problems with rust are over just because it's got a non-metal
body.
This
is the price I had to pay for being 40.. a silly hat and a wired
up sticky-out scarf forced upon me by my wife and sister.