Reliant Robin - Worst ever excuse for a car?

[Stijloor]

The next encounter with the Reliant at 3:22 minutes.....

[AndyN]

Actually, the Reliant isn't the worst. The Bond 875 was!



It had an 875cc Hillman Imp engine which was far more powerful than the poor old Reliant. The Hillman Imp engine was capable of pushing the Bond to 87mph! Scary!

[Claes Gefvenberg]

87 mph! In that? I assume it must have been viciously unstable at high speed?

/Claes

[SteveK]

In Reply to Parent Post by Claes Gefvenberg

87 mph! In that? I assume it must have been viciously unstable at high speed?

/Claes

I did get over 70mph once in my Reliant. Very, very, very scary and unintentional, I was going down a steep hill on a motorway (tended to avoid them normally) with a very strong following wind in the rain. I kid you not, the roof began to lift off and the rain started coming down on the inside of the windscreen. I didn’t dare touch the brakes (very inefficient drum types anyway) and when I did start slowing down I got off at the next exit and stopped to recover from the shock and near death experience!

Steve

[Claes Gefvenberg]

In Reply to Parent Post by SteveK

I didn’t dare touch the brakes (very inefficient drum types anyway) and when I did start slowing down I got off at the next exit and stopped to recover from the shock and near death experience!

I know what you mean, and you probably did the right thing: Even tapping the brakes in that situation in something so unstable may not have been the wisest thing to do.

For what it's worth I had a similar experience once, when a tyre blew on my racing bike going down a very steep and long hill. I was going full bore when it went blam! A lot of bucking, shaking and white knuckles followed for what seemed like an eternety, but after a while the hill ended, and I got it stopped. Then I did exactly what you did. Sat there for a while recovering from the shock, before I got around to changing the tyre and be on my way. I had no speedo on that bike but some other cyclists in the same race did, and some of them claimed to have done over 50mph down that hill...

/Claes

[AndyN]

In Reply to Parent Post by Claes Gefvenberg

87 mph! In that? I assume it must have been viciously unstable at high speed?

/Claes

One hapless owner killed themselves right outside my secondary school, back in the late 60s. The car got out of control on a 40mph limit urban 2 lanes road (!) and he crashed into a solid stone wall. With zero frontal crash protection (it was the 60s) he died of head injuries sustained...

[somashekar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaIv_5-Mho