RELIANT SCIMITAR SS1 (1984-90)
Wisely aiming for the vacant smallsports car market after BL had given up on the British roadster, Reliant approached Michelotti – who had been one of the genre’s leading designers in the Sixties – to design its SS1. Typically, he designed the car’s basic shape in mere minutes.
Some have since suggested that the real reason why his work was so fast is that he was recycling previous ideas for a Spitfire replacement; certainly, his original sketch has more of a Spitfirelike rear haunch than the production version, which has only a small rise from the door to the boot deck.
There may have been obvious Michelotti cues on the car, most notably on the side panels, but the production model ended up with a steep windscreen and more pronounced panel gaps. Inevitably, the new car fell drastically short of expected sales targets.