Guilty Pleasures – The Reliant Robin
In 1981, British Railways introduced a new type of train now synonymous with austerity – the Pacer. Often dubbed ‘Nodding Donkeys’, these stiff-chassised, bogie-less trains were as stripped back as a passenger conveyance could get, with bare-bones interiors, barely any sort of innovation in their mechanics and the cheapest, most easily-adapted bus body that money could buy. While they were universally reviled and undeniably rather rubbish, they achieved their purpose. They were cheap-as-chips, worked (most of the time) and got people on the rails when trains were scarce and expensive for the ailing economy to buoy. For absolutely no reason at all, we now move onto the Reliant Robin…
Often dubbed ‘Plastic Pigs’, these cars were as stripped back as a car of the era could get, with bare-bones interiors, engines that looked like they’d come off a lawnmower, and were built so cheap that they only had three wheels – bizarrely, the single tyre was stuck in front. Cheaper? Yes. Utterly nonsensical? Absolutely. It seems that the British talent for extreme minimalism has always been alive and well.
Introduced in 1973, the Robins really were the definition of an austere car, innovative in ways the modern motorist might not expect, and crucially? Really cheap. They were undeniably a rather crap car on paper – but when it comes down to it, that Reliant engine had very little to cart around. The fibreglass car weighed about 450kg, and when it was put to its paces alongside an 850cc Mini, it usually ended up overtaking.
All the same, with its somewhat bonkers single front wheel and terrible weight distribution, cornering was an art form. For decades, it seemed Reliant must have had an agreement with the lads at Halfords for fibreglass repair kits, as the Robin undoubtedly snapped up the lion’s share of them.
Above all else, the Reliant Robin offered intense fuel economy – some lofty records dictate 70mpg – and was so cheap to buy, especially second-hand, that the thrifty driver often decided he wouldn’t go back once he’d picked up the whole ‘do not oversteer’ habit.
My Grandad was Glaswegian. As you’d perhaps expect, he loved the Robin for being so cheap. Costing only a few hundred quid apiece, he generally knackered up his Reliant every four years and ended up replacing it with one in all manner of colour palettes. In my short time with him alone, I saw him take on two red ones, a yellow one, a blue one, a gold one… each one effectively run into the ground.
Many often mistake the Only Fools and Horses van for a Robin but it it’s actually a Reliant Regal
While most might affiliate the Reliant Robin with requiring a careful driver, he was anything but. He’d take the poor thing on the motorway, where it’d scream like a billygoat and shake like a leaf. He’d haul it around corners so harshly that you’d be thrown to the sides. He’d slam the gearbox so hard that the housing seemed to be permanently squiff. No, it was far from a comfortable ride, and despite being a pretty diminutive fellow, my head was usually pushed against the felted roof once I reached fifteen years old.
The entire cabin, I recall, was pretty awful. Grey textured plastics, seats that appeared to be made of bedframes, and I distinctly remember that the choke knob came off more often than it actually interacted with the engine. The seats looked like they’d been nicked from a bus depot.
All the same, I can’t deny it was fun. Lots of people would point at it and chuckle, and my Grandad would usually take it in his stride – after all, he was still only on a motorbike licence, and had saved a ton of money that could get spent up at the working men’s club. You could usually hear the thing from two streets away, and the old man often noted that he’d been subject to more than a few speed awareness courses, fines, and famously once tipped the bloody thing into a roadside verge.
We’ll just gloss over the fact he bought a second one in 2013 for £50 so he could use it as a donor car. If you ignore the amount of breakdowns and spare parts he went through, they were pretty reliable. Kind of.
In the railway world, the despised Pacer now has an awful lot of dedicated preservation groups who buy up the ex-BR railcars and run them on heritage railways, where they’re cheap and easy to operate at 25mph. Nobody is particularly prizing them for their mechanical abilities, or comfort, or even particularly for their looks. And yet, because they fill a purpose – a not particularly good purpose, certainly, but a purpose all the same – the Pacer has continued to find a lease on life as an austere, undeniably uncomfortable yet highly cost-effective piece of operational hardware.
Perhaps, really, that’s where the Reliant Robin should now be finding its grace. Undeniably bizarre and impractical though they were, these plastic pigs answered a call, and still sit amongst one of the most successful fibreglass cars in history. Look, I’m not saying that you have to love them. I’m not really convinced that I do. But when push comes to shove, it’s indisputable that thriftiness is at the heart of ’70s and ’80s Britain – and in the end, if it works, it works.
We have a bit of a habit of sweeping that age of unquestionable crapness under the rug. We try to ignore the age of garishly painted blocks of flats, try to ignore the Allegros, try to forget the sight and sound of a Pacer growling and nodding past the Tesco carrier bag stuck to the railway embankment…
But it’s a unique cultural milestone for the UK. And in many ways, it’s really something we’re all united by… That reluctance to open up our wallets unless it’s to get to the pub.