R.A-S.H: The Reliant Scimitar GTE

Reliant are an interesting company to trace the history of; their product output includes, of course, the much-derided three-wheelers that sold so well for half a century. At the very opposite end of the scale, the Tamworth concern found themselves chosen by Ford to produce the bodyshells for the awesome and under-acknowledged RS200 Group B rally car.

Somewhere between those two stalls there sat the Scimitar, Reliants offering in the low to medium volume sports-car sector.  And that’s what R.A-S.H (the #1 car brochure archive internet forum series according to Trout Handling Monthly*) brings you today.

“A Bigger all-round motoring experience”

This is Reliant subtly letting the cat out of the bag about what they had done to the Scimitar recently. This brochure, issued  October 1975 documents the Scimitar SE6 which is broadly described as a “hot-cross bun job” on the previous SE5, inasmuch as it was enlarged by a few inches in each direction over the previous, similar looking machine.

“The high-performance estate. A unique blend of power and space that makes it the “grand tourer “of cars”

That seems like calling something the yacht of boats, or the airliner of planes. But we’ll let it go, because the Scimitar was pretty much a unique proposition. The first Scimitars had been conventional sports coupes; not evolving into longroofs until the SE5 of ’68. Tom Karen of Ogle Design was the man with the pen this time around; a designer in which I hold much admiration.

The extra enbiggenment of the SE6 over its forebears allowed for greater interior space and made that Grand Tourer tag all the more appropriate. The rest of the package, though, went more-or-less unchanged from the successful formula that went before. It was, once again, powered by a:

“Big V6 engine”

This was the same Ford “Essex” unit which lived under the bonnet of so many cars; not exactly a highly-strung, high-tech marvel of a machine, but one which did the job with exactly enough effectiveness. It delivered 135hp in a rorty fashion, and could propel the Scimitar at up to 120mph.

“…large 20 gallon tank gives you a 500 mile travelling radius”

This was a valuable feature for a self-proclaimed Grand Tourer. Of course, a 500 mile range on 20 imperial gallons is 25mpg, not a world beating figure by today’s standards but pretty acceptable in 1975 for a three-litre six.

…”hand built with a rust-free glassfibre body on a strong, steel chassis”

It’s true; the Scimitar was hand built but that was pretty much dictated by the GRP manufacturing process, with the glassfibre matting being manually hand-laid into the moulds and then manually glued and bolted together when the timer went “ping” after the resin had cured. Of course, it meant that the whole car would smell of piss for a while in time-honoured GRP tradition.

The steel chassis was indeed strong, and it was this that gave the Scimitar its handling which never really came in for much criticism. Unfortunately, there was never a huge amount of protection applied to it from the factory, and today, after the usual neglect, chassis rot is the main bugbear with any Scimitar restoration project. You might also come across varied and exciting electrical gremlins owing to the fact that everything has to be earthed to the chassis.

“…the GTE is the only car that successfully combines the sports car and the estate”

Well, there had been the Volvo 1800ES (Thanks, Mr Harrell, for reminding me to take the “P”) but that had faded away by 1975. Stylistically, with the quad headlamps and long bonnet you could think of it as a Capri estate, and indeed there were similarities between the two.

For me, the Scimitar always came across as a miniature Jensen Interceptor, and my thoughts on that car are reasonably well documented. The Scimitar certainly wasn’t without global influence; pretty soon came the Lancia Beta HPE and later still the Honda Aerodeck of the mid ’80s. As it was, the Scimitar itself went on in dribs and drabs up to 1986, and then beyond on a smaller scale by a firm called Middlebridge.

For a wonderfully in-depth and superbly written account of the Scimitar story from cradle to grave, head over here.

And to see the terrible thing that happened to the Scimitar name from 1984 onwards, be sure to be here for the next R.A-S.H instalment.

(Disclaimer: All images are of original publicity material, photographed by me. All copyright of the original material is presumably still owned by Reliant, who no longer exist. And I’m very proud to have not mentioned Princess Anne once.

(* Not really)