Reliant was founded in Tamworth, Staffordshire in 1935 by Tom Williams and Eddie (Ewart) Thompson, after Williams had designed a three-wheeled delivery van for the Raleigh bicycle company, who then decided not to build it themselves. The first production Reliant was delivered in June 1935 from a former bus depot at Two Gates, on the south side of Tamworth.
The three-wheeler business grew steadily through the 1950s and 1960s, helped by a UK tax and licensing quirk that let vehicles under 450kg be driven on a motorcycle licence. Reliant also branched into four-wheel sports cars, launching the Sabre and then the Scimitar at the 1964 Earls Court Motor Show, designed by David Ogle and completed by Tom Karen, initially using Ford six-cylinder engines. The Scimitar GTE, a pioneering ‘sports estate,’ followed in 1968 and became closely associated with Princess Anne, who bought the first of seven she would eventually own in 1970.
Reliant also acquired the rival three-wheeler maker Bond Cars in 1969, closing Bond’s Preston factory the following year and continuing to build the Bond Bug at its own Tamworth plant until 1974. By the 1970s, buoyed by the Robin’s continued three-wheeler sales, Reliant had briefly become the UK’s second-largest British-owned car manufacturer, behind only British Leyland. The company changed hands several times from the 1960s onward, moved production to a new factory near Cannock in the late 1990s, and finally ceased car manufacturing in 2002.