Bassey

The Reliant Scimitar occupies a weird place in the history of the British automotive industry, and in truth, it’s probably fair to suggest that it’s only in recent years, decades after Tamworth’s finest ceased production, that it’s come to be truly appreciated for what it is: a world-class grand tourer with lashings of style, an innovative construction, and decent amounts of poke (at least by the standards of the day).

Indeed, that a car once beloved of the jet-set and able to claim genuine associations with royalty thanks to Princess Anne (c’mon now, you all knew we were going to get that in nice and early) should’ve spent so long in the automotive doldrums is little short of baffling, even more so given that so many of the GTE’s peers have been embraced as fully paid-up, bone-fide classic icons in the same period.

In short, we at Retropower have long thought the Scimitar GTE to have vast reserves of untapped potential, and so everyone who works here was overjoyed when, late in 2023, an inquiry concerning the feasibility of a resto-modified example came our way. Better still, the car in question came with a story attached to it, having been owned almost from new by the same family—the same family that inquired as to whether we’d like to help rebuild it.

Fast forward some months, and the car in question has been carefully removed from the hedge in which it had lain dormant for since the early nineties and hauled to Retropower HQ. We then prised open its bonnet (a trickier task than you might have assumed given the release mechanism had succumbed to the rigours of as hedge-based existence) to get a closer look at the Essex within, before setting about 3D scanning the whole car in extreme detail.

Scanning will be central to our plans for this car, as the ultimate goal is to design and produce a one-off bodyshell in carbon fibre. Our thinking is practical as much as aesthetic, as, once complete, the car will have infinitely more power than anyone at Reliant could have conceived, and so will need to have larger wheels (and wider tyres) in order to accommodate the bigger brakes such lofty performance ambitions demand.

The need to physically enclose all this, coupled with our desire to carefully rework the appearance of the GTE without diluting what made it such a striking shape in the first place, effectively mandated custom bodywork, and thoughtfully widened and reprofiled arches are most definitely on the table.

Our custom bodywork will be mated to a tube-frame chassis of our own design, featuring fully independent, double wishbone suspension all-round (because let’s face it, the Triumph-based trunnion suspension fitted as standard was never going to be up to the task).

The engine we intend to fit to the GTE is the Cosworth GAA, an engine with its roots in the Ford Capri European Touring Car Championship of the early seventies, an application in which it made well over 420 bhp thanks to its quad overhead cam and 24 valve layout. Ours will have a larger capacity (up from 3.4 litres to 4.0 litres by dint of not having to comply with FIA class restrictions) and will be built for this very car by the undisputed king of high-performance Ford V6s, Ric Wood Motorsport.

The GAA is also a fitting choice for this build as it permits us to pay tribute to one of the UK’s fastest and most beloved of Scimitars, ‘Blue Thunder.’ Built by Bev Fawkes many years ago, Blue Thunder grew to become a club racing institution, a beloved car with the ability to humble bone-fide competition machinery, and much of this stemmed from the 440bhp GAA nestled beneath its bonnet.

Unlike Blue Thunder, our build, tentatively called ‘Project Bassey,’ will predominately be a road car; as such, we plan on carefully updating and modifying its interior to make it a comfier, more cosseting place to reside. It won’t be anything too dramatic, rather a case of a sympathetic reinterpretation of the GTE’s classic cabin using modern materials and a Vintage Air HVAC system.

Obviously this is a build that’s in its very, very early stages at this point in time, so be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to be kept right up to date with our progress.