This Reliant Scimitar auction result was always going to attract a certain comment.
You know the one.
Whenever a Scimitar GTE appears, somebody mentions the same member of the Royal Family.
Usually several people do.
So when this 1978 Reliant Scimitar GTE Auto came up at Anglia Car Auctions, I couldn’t resist asking:
“Didn’t a member of the Royal Family like these? You’ll have to remind me…”
I knew exactly what I was doing.
And judging by the spirited bidding that followed, there are still plenty of people who like Scimitars without needing any royal encouragement.
We might as well get it out of the way.
Princess Anne has one of the most famous associations with any British production car.
According to the Reliant Motor Club, she received her first Scimitar GTE from the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh as a combined 20th birthday and Christmas present in 1970.
The club says she has owned eight Scimitars in total and still owns a 1989 Middlebridge Scimitar GTE.
She even visited Reliant’s Tamworth factory in 1975, arriving in her second Scimitar.
So yes.
The connection is very real.
But the GTE deserves to be remembered for considerably more than that.
Say “Reliant” to somebody who isn’t particularly interested in classics and there is a fair chance they’ll immediately think of three wheels.
The Scimitar was something very different.
This was a proper performance car.
Rear-wheel drive.
Ford V6 power.
Four seats.
Plenty of luggage space.
And one of the most distinctive body shapes of its era.
The original Scimitar GTE appeared in 1968 after Reliant asked Ogle Design to develop a genuine four-seat version of the earlier Scimitar GT.
The result was something remarkably forward-thinking.
Today we’d probably call it a shooting brake.
In the late 1960s, it was something much more unusual.
The Scimitar combined the performance and driving position of a sporting GT with the practicality of an estate car.
Its long roof flowed into a large rear load area beneath an opening rear window.
Four adults could travel in it.
You could carry a proper amount of luggage.
And with Ford’s 3.0-litre Essex V6 up front, it was capable of serious motorway speeds.
The Reliant Motor Club records a quoted 138bhp and around 120mph for the early GTE.
That’s a compelling package even now.
The car we filmed was a later SE6A, registered in 1978.
By then, the GTE had evolved considerably from the original SE5.
The later cars were larger and more substantial, with the familiar glassfibre body sitting over a separate chassis.
And this particular example had another interesting feature.
It wasn’t still running the standard 3.0-litre engine.
Anglia Car Auctions described the car as having an upgraded 3.1-litre RS engine.
The accompanying paperwork included a copy of the receipt for that engine dating from 1985.
Interestingly, the V5C still recorded the original 2994cc capacity.
The engine had also benefited from plenty of more recent attention.
That included:
This wasn’t simply a Scimitar that had been sitting untouched for years.
The vendor had only bought the car the previous year, apparently with long-term ownership in mind.
Then his Triumph TR7 Sprint reappeared in one of ACA’s earlier sales and plans changed.
Before that happened, however, he’d invested heavily in the Scimitar.
ACA said almost £2,200 had been spent since September of the previous year.
The braking system had received front discs, calipers, copper pipes, rear shoes, brake cylinders and adjusters.
Goodridge braided hoses had been fitted front and rear.
It had also gained new halogen headlights, tyres and stainless wheel nuts.
The suspension had received attention too.
The front end had been rebuilt with:
That matters on a car like this.
A Scimitar may have a glassfibre body, but underneath it is still a substantial sporting car with plenty of mechanical components that need proper maintenance.
Someone had clearly been spending money where it mattered.
The odometer displayed 75,382 miles.
The history file was also described as well presented.
It contained a good collection of old tax discs, MoT certificates and maintenance receipts, mostly dating from 2000 onwards.
There was also a spreadsheet detailing previous ownership and expenditure.
The V5C recorded six former keepers.
And then there was the colour.
Yellow isn’t subtle.
Neither is a Scimitar GTE.
Put the two together and it works remarkably well.
The shape is so unusual that trying to make one disappear into the background almost seems pointless.
Long bonnet.
Large glass area.
Extended roofline.
Those wonderfully period proportions.
It’s one of those cars that could only really have come from Britain in the 1970s.
Anglia Car Auctions estimated the Scimitar at:
£4,000 to £6,000.
Given the recent mechanical expenditure, upgraded engine and amount of history, it looked like an interesting proposition.
And bidders clearly thought so too.
Once the auction began, there was proper interest.
The room was bidding.
The internet was bidding.
Neither side seemed particularly keen to disappear.
The price worked its way through the estimate and kept going.
That’s always fun to watch because you can see two completely different types of bidder competing in real time.
Somebody sitting in the auction hall.
Somebody possibly hundreds of miles away pressing a button.
Both wanting the same car.
This one developed into a genuinely spirited auction.
And, naturally, I managed to get the inevitable royal reference in before it really got going.
Watch the auction below and see how far the bidding went:
Eventually, the hammer fell at:
£6,700.
With Anglia Car Auctions’ buyer’s premium added, the final bill became:
£7,236.
That put the Scimitar comfortably above the £4,000 to £6,000 guide.
And perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising.
Think about what the buyer actually got.
A distinctive 1970s British GT.
V6 power.
Automatic transmission.
Four proper seats.
A huge luggage area.
An unusual glassfibre body.
A 3.1-litre upgraded engine.
And a long list of recent mechanical work.
All for £7,236 including premium.
There aren’t many classics offering quite the same combination.
It’s an interesting question.
Scimitars have almost everything classic-car buyers claim to want.
They’re distinctive.
They’re genuinely interesting technically.
They’re practical.
They’re fast enough to use comfortably in modern traffic.
They have excellent club support.
And they possess one of the strongest period identities of almost any British car of their era.
Yet values remain relatively modest compared with plenty of other 1970s sporting cars.
Perhaps the Reliant badge still holds them back in some people’s minds.
If so, that seems rather unfair.
The Scimitar’s glassfibre body is another part of its character.
It means the outer panels don’t rust in the conventional sense.
That does not, of course, mean Scimitars are immune to corrosion.
The separate chassis underneath still needs careful inspection, along with the usual mechanical and structural areas.
But it does give the car a different ownership proposition from many steel-bodied contemporaries.
And it has certainly helped plenty of Scimitars survive.
The Princess Anne association is brilliant.
It’s part of the model’s history and something Scimitar owners are rightly proud of.
The Reliant Motor Club even counts The Princess Royal as an honorary member.
But sometimes that famous connection threatens to overshadow the car itself.
Strip the story away and the GTE still makes an extremely persuasive classic.
It was an innovative sporting estate before that idea became fashionable.
It had Ford V6 performance.
It offered genuine practicality.
And it still looks unlike almost anything else.
This one went beyond its £6,000 top estimate before the hammer finally came down at £6,700.
The internet wanted it.
The room wanted it.
Eventually, one of them had to stop.
At £7,236 including premium, the successful bidder ended up with a wonderfully distinctive piece of British motoring history.
And yes, every time they take it anywhere, somebody will mention her.
They know.
We know.
Everybody knows.
But go on…
You know you still want to type her name.
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