The Reliant FW11 is a prototype car designed by
Marcello Gandini
Marcello Gandini (26 August 1938 – 13 March 2024) was an Italian Automotive design, car designer widely known for his work with the Italian car design house Gruppo Bertone, Bertone, where his work included designing the Alfa Romeo Carabo and A ...
of
Gruppo Bertone
Gruppo Bertone, commonly known as Bertone, was an Italian industrial design company which specialized in Automotive design, car styling, coachbuilder, coachbuilding and Contract manufacturer, manufacturing. It was also a Automotive industry in ...
in 1977 for the British company
Reliant
Reliant may also refer to:
* Reliant Energy, an energy corporation from Houston, Texas, United States
* Reliant Motors, a defunct British car manufacturer
* Reliant Pharmaceuticals, now owned by GlaxoSmithKline
* Stinson Reliant, a utility and ...
who were developing the car for the Turkish
Otosan
Ford Otomotiv Sanayi A.Ş. (Turkish for 'Ford Automotive Industry'), doing business as Ford Otosan, is an automotive manufacturing company based in Turkey that is equally owned by Ford Motor Company and Koç Holding. The company was established ...
car company.
The five-door hatchback sits on a wheel base of 2629 mm and an overall length of 4350 mm. It was designed to suit a range of engines from 1.3- to 2.0-litre.
Four prototypes of this car were produced, two of which were sent to England with the Reliant badge, and two other examples, one of them white and the other one blue, were sent to Turkey with Otosan's Anadol badge. The car, which had a modern design and "luxuries" for that period's European cars such as electrical windows, was deemed too expensive to produce profitably by Anadol and the project was shelved. Following Anadol's decision not to build the FW 11, Reliant exhibited the Scimitar SE 7 at its stand as a prototype during the 1980
Birmingham Motor Show
The British International Motor Show was an annual (bi-biennial after 1976) motor show held by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) between 1903 and 2008 in England. The show was relaunched in 2021 with a new location at Farnbo ...
.
The two Anadol prototypes were held in
Koç Holding
Koç Holding A.Ş. () is a Turkish multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey. It operates as the country's largest company, and the only to be listed on the Fortune Global 500 as of 2024. Koç Holding's contributio ...
's (which owns
Otosan
Ford Otomotiv Sanayi A.Ş. (Turkish for 'Ford Automotive Industry'), doing business as Ford Otosan, is an automotive manufacturing company based in Turkey that is equally owned by Ford Motor Company and Koç Holding. The company was established ...
) depot in Istanbul's Acıbadem district for nearly 25 years. Today, one of them is displayed at the
Rahmi M. Koç Museum
The Rahmi M. Koç Museum is a private industrial museum in Istanbul, Turkey dedicated to the history of transport, industry and communications. Rahmi M. Koç, member of one of the wealthiest families in Turkey and retired chairman (currently the ...
in Istanbul, since 2004. One of the other prototypes, the Reliant Scimitar SE 7, was purchased by a German collector in 2006 and exported from England.
The FW 11 design was later refined by Bertone for use by
Citroën
Citroën ()The double-dot diacritic over the 'e' is a diaeresis () indicating the two vowels are sounded separately, and not as a diphthong. is a French automobile brand. The "Automobiles Citroën" manufacturing company was founded on 4 June 19 ...
, and with little changes (e.g. a steel unibody with steel and plastic panels instead of fibreglass) it was mass-produced as the
Citroën BX
The Citroën BX is a large family car which was produced by the French manufacturer Citroën from 1982 to 1994. In total, 2,315,739 BXs were built during its 12-year history. The hatchback was discontinued in 1993 with the arrival of the Xantia, ...
for 12 years, becoming a "best-seller" for the French company.
References
External links
{{Reliant
FW11