The story
History
Since the Regal 3/25 of 1962, Reliant had wanted a sportier three-wheeler for younger buyers.source 1 The design that answered came from Tom Karen of Ogle Design, at Letchworth (more on him in the designers).source 2source 3source 4 When it began is not agreed. English Wikipedia has Ogle sketching wedges as early as 1964 under the name Reliant Rogue; Lancaster Insurance’s history has Karen proposing a sporty two-seater three-wheeler to Reliant’s management in 1967 and Ogle building a mock-up in 1968.source 1source 4 Motor Sport in 1970 said it was planned by “Toni Karen” in 1950, which can only be a misprint.source 5 Reliant was doubtful. A wedge so far from its sober Regal might, its managers feared, harm the Reliant name.source 1source 4
Another firm’s troubles gave the design a home. Bond’s parent, the Loxhams and Bradshaw group, was bought by Dutton-Forshaw in 1968, and Bond Cars Ltd of Preston, which did not fit, was put up for sale. A management buy-out failed, and in February 1969 Reliant bought Bond.source 2 Grace’s Guide puts the takeover in 1971, but the owners’ club’s dated account, which English Wikipedia and Lancaster also follow, has 1969.source 6source 1source 4 Bond’s sales of its Imp-engined Bond 875 were falling, and Reliant’s managing director, Ray Wiggin, decided that Karen’s car would be sold as a Bond.source 4source 7 The 875 was wound down at Preston to make room for it.source 2 Underneath was a new ladder chassis by Reliant’s chief engineer John Crosthwaite, with Regal parts and running gear meant for the coming Reliant Robin.source 1
Something new under the sun
The first Bugs were built in the week ending 1 May 1970: 114 700Es, the first 11 700ESs, and the only basic 700 there would ever be.source 8 The car was launched at Woburn Abbey in June 1970, designed, said its makers, exclusively for 17- to 25-year-olds.source 5source 4source 2 Wiggin’s launch speech was a case for the three-wheeler. Its sales had grown almost three times as fast as four-wheelers’ in the 1960s; home-built three-wheelers registered in 1969 were 62.4 per cent up on 1960, against 18.3 per cent for four-wheelers; and Britain had about 100,000 tricycles to just over four million cars. It was, he added, 200 years since Cugnot’s steam tricycle of 1770. Reliant was counting on a road tax of £10, where a car paid £25, on cheap insurance in Group 1, low running costs and easy parking.source 5 Wiggin hoped the Bug would set trends as the Mini had.source 5
It was taxed and licensed as a motor tricycle, and anyone with a motorcycle licence could drive one.source 3source 5 The single front wheel steered; Reliant’s 701 cc all-aluminium four, from the Regal 3/30, sat between the two seats and drove the rear wheels. It gave 29 bhp (22 kW), or 31 bhp (23 kW) in the high-compression 700ES.source 1source 5source 9 The body was a glass-fibre wedge 2,794 mm (9 ft 2 in) long on the steel ladder chassis. Instead of doors the whole canopy, roof, windscreen and upper sides, tilted forward, and the detachable side screens were also the way out if the car rolled over.source 3source 1source 10source 4 It would do about 122 km/h (76 mph), quicker than a basic 850 Mini; the prototype had gone over 145 km/h (90 mph), and Reliant’s management reined it in.source 1source 4
The basic 700 cost £548 and the 700E £29 more; the 700ES, at £629, cost more than a basic Mini at £620.source 5source 7source 1 The 700 itself was the “Bare Bug”, for fresh-air fiends: a fixed canopy, no side screens and crossply tyres.source 10source 4 The 700ES added low-profile tyres on alloy rear wheels, a spare wheel, headrests, quilted trim, a leather-rimmed wheel and twin horns.source 10 Whatever the version, the public could have any colour as long as it was tangerine.source 10source 3source 4 Bond’s slogan was “Something new under the sun”; it called the Bug a “funabout” rather than a runabout, and its advertising promised that no car outside the pub would draw a bigger crowd.source 4source 5 By the end of 1970 Reliant claimed that six owners in ten were 25 or younger.source 4
Half a Bug
As a three-wheeler the Bug was technically a motorcycle, and could not be shown at the London Motor Show. So in 1970 Reliant joined two Bugs back to back and exhibited them as a four-wheeler.source 3source 4
Sorry, you can’t buy this Bug, but we’ll sell you half of it.
A few Bugs were not tangerine. Six white ones, AME 191H to AME 196H, toured the seaside resorts for Rothmans’ Cambridge cigarettes, and three of them survive.source 4source 1 The Bug Club’s count is different: four white and six lime-green Bugs sold to companies, for purposes it does not explain.source 10 AME 191H also starred in commercials for Cape Fruit. Other Bugs were the star prize on ATV’s The Golden Shot, a Jersey Ice Cream publicity car and a prize in a Woolworths record competition in 1972, and a Fine Fare supermarket contest asked how many bottles of Bulmer’s cider would fit in one.source 4source 1source 7
To Tamworth, and the 750
Production moved to Reliant’s works at Tamworth in the second half of 1970. The owners’ club dates the move to July and the closing of the Preston factory to December; Lancaster says by the end of 1970, and the Bug Club gives Tamworth from 1971.source 2source 4source 10 Some 300 chassis numbers, BB60700 to BB60999, are missing from every known record around the time of the move; the Bug Club’s historian concludes that the numbering restarted at 61000.source 8
From August 1971 (BB61445) the gearbox had synchromesh on all its gears and a new reverse position.source 8source 4 In February 1972 a shorter steering column made room for a dished wheel under the new safety rules, and that November the list prices were £578, £607 and £653.source 8 In April 1973 Glass’s Motorcycle Check Book recorded the Bug 700 as discontinued, although only one had ever been made. That October the 700E and 700ES ended at BB62427, and the 750E and 750ES took over with the Robin’s 748 cc engine, at £648.87 and £694.14.source 8
The last Bond
The 750s were discontinued in May 1974 at BB62569, and VLB 249M became the last vehicle ever built with the Bond name.source 8 Only 142 750s had been made; English Wikipedia says fewer than 200, and that Reliant cleared the line to build more of its new Robin 750.source 11source 1 The Bug had been expensive to build, and expensive to insure for the young drivers it was aimed at; insurers were alarmed, Lancaster writes, at the risks they took testing its acceleration. It never met its target of 2,000 a year.source 4source 7 When Motor Sport visited Tamworth in March 1976, it noted simply that the Bond Bug had ceased production.source 12
On the road
Motor Sport’s editor handed the Bug to his daughter, a girl of nearly 21 who drove an orange Volkswagen Beetle. She found it noisy, with the engine in the cabin with her, a bonnet that rattled and stiff suspension; with the side screens on she was hot below and cold above, and tall drivers hit their knees on the steering-wheel support bar. But it went very well: she saw an indicated 129 km/h (80 mph) on a motorway, it steered well, and it was narrow, with a small turning circle. Cornered fast, it felt a little unsafe, and her father added that it was worse in the wet. It returned 53 mpg.source 5
I would call the Bond Bug a fun car and I quite liked it, but as long-distance transport it is – there’s only one word for it – crude.
The next February her father wrote that the Bug was not for the ancient: his assistant had got one up on two wheels within a quarter of a mile of the office, damaging its glass-fibre front.source 13 Others were warmer. Motor found the 700ES fast, safe and above all fun, and its testers were sorry to give the demonstrator back.source 7source 4
A completely new approach to the economy three wheeler and it is our prediction that it will become the Mustang of its class.
The seats were fixed, so Bond supplied pedal pads in different sizes; drivers over about 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) were at a disadvantage, and short ones often needed a cushion.source 4source 7 The car sat so low that it felt like a go-kart, faster than it was.source 1 In Austria in 1974, Austro-Motor timed it from 0 to 100 km/h in about 17 seconds, found it never used more than 6 litres per 100 km even in town, and complained of a stiff gearchange and noise when revved.source 14 A reader’s letter to Motor Sport in 2010 recalled that the racing driver John Britten, reviewing a Bug for a magazine, rolled it in a one-point turn on Silverstone’s main straight between races.source 15
After the Bug
Reliant built four-wheeled Bugs, code-named FW9, before it launched the Reliant Kitten; the owners’ club records one prototype, and Ogle took the studies on into a different-looking coupé that the management did not pursue.source 11source 1 An 850 cc overhead-camshaft engine with twin SU carburettors, for which 70 hp was claimed, was developed with BRM for the Bug and an unbuilt sports car.source 1 In 1990 Mike and Gary Webster bought the original moulds and a licence from Reliant, and sold four-wheeled kit Bugs, with a Mini front subframe and the choice of canopy or open top, and a few three-wheelers (more such firms in British kit microcars).source 1source 10 In 1994 Karen restyled the Bug for Reliant as the Sprint, with rounded edges and round headlamps on half a Robin chassis; Reliant’s management would not build it, and a four-wheeled Clubman by Andy Plumb in 1998 died too.source 1
Karen’s other work included the Raleigh Chopper bicycle, Kiddicraft’s Marble Run toy and Reliant’s Scimitar and Robin.source 4source 10 The Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum in Georgia credits the Bug with ending the idea, in Britain, that a three-wheeler had to look like a four-wheeler.source 3 Karen was an honorary life member of the Bug Club, and died on New Year’s Eve 2022, aged 96.source 10
