Here it is then - the last one until the New Year - Happy Christmas all..........
Beachcomber’s –Tales from the Day.
“The Reliant Robin Van – Open Air Motoring”
First off here’s a brief reminder about the vehicle at the centre of this tale – the Reliant Robin Van.
This was a vehicle produced in post war [ WW2 ] England in Car, Estate [ !! ] and Van guises as a three wheeler to get round the licence laws of the day to allow motorcyclists to drive these type of vehicles without having to take a car test. They also qualified [ on weight breaks ] for a lower annual road tax fee. It was an effort to get the austere post war economy of Britain going again. Everything was built ultra lightweight to get below the limit – including the thickness of the GRP body.
It was one of THE most unstable vehicles you could ever see on the road – any mild corner taken at 20 mph + would see the thing trip over on it’s side. It was quite common in the day to see folks walk over to right a fallen Robin as if it were nothing out of the ordinary ! Top speed [ ommigod ] of around 70 mph was like 170 plus on a modern Superbike – exciting. On the plus [ ?? ] side road tax was fraction of that for a car and fuel economy was as good as a bike. They offered an alternative to the ubiquitous sidecar outfit.
So there you have it – the Reliant Robin – in this tale, a Van.
So, we’ve all been up to one of our rare visits to the Ace on the North Circular – which in those days was a bit of a dump – what we’d call “a greasy spoon” caff. Primarily a truckers caff during the day and a convenient place for bikers to meet – generally on their way somewhere else !
Now the North Circular [ where the Ace is situated ], as it’s name might suggest was in fact built to take the heavy traffic away from central London and dump it somewhere in the suburbs. “Our” patch was Dagenham / Romford and in those days literally on the edge of the countryside. We much preferred the local rural Caffs, where you could also enjoy a good burn up along uncrowded [ and NON speed restricted ] country roads.
Anyway on this day the night was young and we’d had enough of the posers at the Ace and decided to get off to the Blinking Owl for some real riding.
As the North Circular was still busy with trucks at that time of night we decided to take a more direct route, which was reasonably quiet.
Initially this was an orderly convoy with speeds hovering around the legal limit for those roads – 40 / 60 mph. Then a couple of interlopers joined in and very soon the unspoken gauntlet was thrown down.
Soon speeds rose to 70 - 80mph through what were pretty busy townlets. The section of road was 2 cars wide in each direction, but with no central barrier.
We were approaching a notorious bottleneck where the road narrowed to 1 lane in each direction to take the road under a narrow rail bridge. I can only assume that the two strangers didn’t know the area well – or were very brave……………. We slowed down in anticipation of the narrow road, whilst the faster of the two looked back and gave us the V as he dived into the short tunnel under the bridge.
We heard a screeching sound followed by an enormous crashing – amplified by the tunnel walls. We assumed the worst and all pulled up at the tunnel entrance to see what had happened to matey.
Anyway – what he hadn’t realised was that there were a set of traffic lights the other side of the bridge and a Reliant Robin Van had pulled up, waiting for the lights to change.
Matey [ Matchless CSR ] had gone smack into the back of the Reliant . When we arrived we couldn’t believe our eyes and immediately fell into uncontrollable fits of laughter. There was the van with matey on the van floor – the sides of the van had blown out complete with the impact, and the roof had peeled forward over the front windscreen as if some giant can opener had been at work. The two bemused occupants were still sat there in the front seats, with CSR’s head wedged between them.
Remarkably nobody was seriously injured and even the CSR was bashed into shape to allow him to ride home.
We even got the Robin “roadworthy” courtesy of some lengths of rope. We pulled the roof back into place and peeled the sides back into position and then wrapped the rope around the van to hold them in place – like some enormous parcel.
From that time on, Matchless CSR’s were known as “Robin Killers” up at the Owl