Top Gear Returns

Loved the new episode of Top Gear last night (27/6/2010), but the thing with the Reliant Robin made me laugh my socks off and scared the hell out of me at the same time. As former a motorcyclist a lot of my mates had the damned things and I had lifts in them from time to time. I always felt quite scared going around a corner in a Robin, but if I realised then how easy they were to roll I would never have got in one. The problem is that they sort wallow in to a corner like a boat and as Jeremy Clarkson proved if you did not have a passenger to use as a counter weight a right hand turn could prove disastrous. Of course he was deliberately turning it over but even the Reliant enthusiasts admitted you could turn them over without trying.

The most scary thing I ever saw with a Reliant Robin was on the M6 Weaver Viaduct near Runcorn. I was coming back from a caravan rally on a very windy Sunday afternoon, it had been a long and difficult tow due to extremely high winds. I had experienced more than a few moments on the journey and had seen two caravans that had lost it on the route. I was travelling south west in the inside lane and the wind was coming from the north. The Robin was travelling up the hill in the inside lane going in the opposite direction. As the Robin reached the apex of the bridge a strong gust lifted it completely off the ground, spun it 360 degrees and deposited it in the outside lane almost alongside me. By the time the driver had regained control he was facing the on coming traffic. He was luck not to have been in the path of anything else at the time. As he disappeared in my mirrors he was turning around the right way. I often wondered if that guy ever drove that thing again after he got it home.

Read a review of the first show of the new series in the Telegraph