Amazingly the project scored an A+ and I then turned it into a book which I was offered a publishing contract
for. The only snag was that I had to find £2000 towards publishing cost. When your a student thats a lot of Scrumpy Cider and Tuna sandwhiches and so sadly I never took up their offer. So if anyone reading would like to publish it free or cheap please e-mail me. I collected so much information at the time that I was only able to use about a quarter of it in my project so I decided to keep it one
day and use it for something else, though I never quite knew what.
Upon moving house I rediscovered all the info in my parents loft and it just suddenly screamed to put entered on to the Internet, hence the creation of this site. At one point I was also approached by the BBC TV program "Top Gear" as they used some of my information in a programme about the Reliant Robin. As well as a few articles I have written, this year also heard my web site on BBC Radio Shropshire when they called for a quick chat about Reliant's decision to cease manufacturing the Robin. I was also delighted when Microsoft e-mailed me to say they would include a link to this site in their Automobiles section of Microsoft Encarta, this was also followed by this site being featured in the March 2001 Practical Classics magazine. My Robin was eventually put to sleep in 1993 when a lady in a dark blue Vauxhall Astra parked her car on my rear seat as I waited at the traffic lights one day.
So GRE33N (How I wish I kept that number plate) was no more. I then brought an X reg Reliant Rialto and whilst it was a bit nippier than the Robin with its 850cc engine it just did not have the charm of the Robin. There was something about that car that made people smile and even want to get in it to see what it was like. Even people who jeered at 3-wheelers became so curious that they had to get in and have a look. If I had £1 for everyone who said, "One of your wheels have fallen off!" I would be on an exotic island now drinking cocktails all day. My reply of course would be to show them the spare wheel in the back of the car and say, "Dont worry, I found it so I put it in here for safe keeping." But giving the Rialto its praises the passenger door mirror had a really unique feature that most executive cars dont have and that was that at any speed over 40mph the mirror would imitate a jet engine with a really cool jet sound. People were really suprised when they sat inside my Reliants and they proclaimed, "Its just like a real car." Its exactly like a real car with all the same controls. I think most people were expecting peddles and a joystick attached to a rather large elastic band but I guess thats thanks to the Media.
I had the Rialto until about 1995 when it suddenly seemed to be cast under a wicked spell and got hit by numerous vehicles in the space of a few weeks. A year or so after graduating I decided to take my driving test and since moving into the IT sector where I now work as a "Senior PC Network Support Analyst"
I brought my first car that had a wheel in each corner; a Vauxhall Cavalier Estate. I have changed it a couple of times since then and have a Rover 620SLi now but when ever I see a Reliant Robin I always think back to the one I used to own because despite all the jokes these cars recieve they really are fun to own and drive and are an eccentric part of British history.
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