MEET THE OWNER – BOB SIMPKINS AND HIS 1975 RELIANT TW9 ‘ANT’

Never take your work home with you. A worthy adage, but one we’re lucky Bob Simpkins never paid heed. Now treasurer and membership secretary of the Reliant Owners’ Club’s Birmingham, he has three Tamworth cars in his collection: a Rialto and two TW9s, better known as the Ant.

Beasts of burden, the TW9 model was a chassis, cab and engine combo that could be fitted out for dozens of tasks. Most commonly used as pick up trucks and box vans, they also found uses as street sweepers, gully emptiers, milk floats, auxiliary fire units, arctics, tankers, tippers and skip loaders.

Though intended primarily for foreign markets, the TW9 ‘Ant’ found success in the home market, too, enjoying a two decade production life owing to its adaptable nature. Reliant itself used TW9s around its Two Gates, Tamworth factory; as site hacks, it couldn’t ask for anything better.

Better than the wrath of a mother-in-law, certainly – but, despite the best efforts of a blackberry briar and wiring gremlins, Bob’s second TW9, a long bed model used by the Reliant works for six-and-a-half-years, is still with us, having returned to the road in 2009.

Context is everything, so we best explain. The TW9 you see at the top of the article is the ex-factory Ant in question, and Bob saved it after a builder knocked on his door in 1995.
Said builder was clearing a site for development in Bedworth, Warwickshire, and had seen Bob’s orange TW9 in the area. Yes, by that point, they were finding him.

‘At the time,’ Bob explained, ‘I had a small [side] business making play equipment [slides for children for pubs and parks]; I was using a car and a large trailer, and the car went wrong. I worked at the time at Rolls-Royce and a chap there said, “You want a Reliant!”

“Ha-ha,” I said, “a three-wheeler wouldn’t tow my trailer!” About a fortnight later he brought me the Exchange and Mart, and I thought he was going to turn to the car pages, but he turned to the lorry pages. And there was this funny thing [which] looked like a trailer with a cab on the front.’

The gauntlet had been thrown down, and Bob brought the (first) TW9 home, quickly realising how useful it would be for work. ‘[I sold] 15 ft stainless steel slides [and they] fitted a treat,’ Bob said, as he used the TW9 to take items back and forth to be welded at home, and then on to the powder coaters before delivery.

Earning its keep, the TW9 quickly endeared itself. ‘It ended up as our main transport [for] me and the Mrs,’ Bob said. ‘Then, one Sunday morning, a gentleman [the builder from Bedworth] arrived, knocked on the door, and said, “Is that your silly orange thing outside?”’

Unphased, Bob needed to know more. ‘I said, “it’s the only car I’ve got” and he said: “Do you want another for spare parts, I’m positive [the vehicle I’ve found] is one of these, its [at the] back of the pub in Bedworth, I’ve got to go, I’m late for my mother-in-law’s Sunday dinner!”

That’s all I knew, so I went over to Bedworth, I found the pub with the field at the back, but I couldn’t see a vehicle there, but as I was walking away I remember him saying “it’s in the briar”. Briar? A briar brook? I thought, “it’ll be no good if it was in a brook,” but I saw a pile of blackberries in the corner, a blackberry briar, that someone had been knocking holes in […]

Around the third hole was where a headlight goes. So [I pulled more of the briar away] and thought it was either on bricks or some kind of three-wheeled vehicle.’ Yes, someone had abandoned an Ant in a blackberry briar; sometimes, the jokes write themselves.

Bob, meanwhile, was undeterred. ‘My mate came over, I shut my eyes and scrabbled underneath […] and attached a chain to his car-van, and around what I thought was strong [on the TW9]. After five minutes of moving back and forth, something began to move […] and out came the Reliant,’ he said. What emerged was a 1975 TW9, with a bed extended by the factory and a larger 748cc engine as fitted to Ants from 1972.

A long and expensive restoration ensued; by 2008, the TW9 was almost ready for its first MoT in decades, but a connection issue stopped the headlights from working, and cost him the chance to take the newly completed Ant on the Reliant Owners’ Club Land’s End to John O’Groats run.

Luckily, he’d bought a Rialto by that point with which he could take part. A long-time member of the club after he’d joined to help diagnose a braking issue with his first TW9, another member would also come to his aid to fix the final problem keeping his second Ant out of the MoT bay.

Having met an ex-Reliant employee on the rally, said staffer remembered that there was “something different” about the way Ant headlights were wired. He later sent Bob a wiring diagram in the post to check.

Bob recalled: ‘We were following [a wiring diagram] for a car. We put the drawings side by side, and my mate went down to [where the TW9 was stored]. After 30 seconds, he spotted what was wrong; you had to swap the two leads on the back of the speedo. [We did that] and [the lights] worked.’

At last! The second TW9 had an MoT, and it was time to show it off. Bob knew nothing of the TW9’s previous history at that point – until its arrival on the show field began to jog some memories.
He said: ‘When I first did it up and took it round the Reliant shows, people [ex-factory staff] were saying “I’ve driven this, I know I have”, but nobody could give me photographic proof.

Luckily, before the law changed, my wife [sent off to the DVLA] to find out about its history. It came out that [it was used] by the factory at Tamworth […] and when Reliant held their rallies on the sports ground at the factory, they used 45-gallon barrels as waste bins. At the end of the rally, some of the club members would drive the [TW9] around, picking up the 45-gallon barrels of rubbish. They’d driven it!’

Its unusual appearance and three-wheeled stature prompted a few of the typical Reliant jokes, but Bob reports no complaints with the performance or handling, having driven the TW9 at the national speed limit with the bed loaded.

‘Like anything you have to learn to drive it,’ he said. ‘The mistake people make is to brake in the corner, it’s like the pulling the front brake on a pushbike. People say “they [three-wheeled Reliants] turn over” but that’s because they’re locking up the brakes in a bend.’

‘It’s an oddball, but they’re interesting,’ Bob concluded.

Who are we to disagree?