The Reliant FW11 is a prototype car designed by

Marcello Gandini Marcello Gandini (born 26 August 1938) is an Italian car designer, known for his work with the automotive design house Gruppo Bertone, including his designs of the Lamborghini Miura, Countach, and the Lamborghini Diablo. In a 2009 interview wit ...

of Gruppo Bertone in 1977 for the British company

Reliant Reliant Motor Company was a British car manufacturer based in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. It was founded in 1935 and ended car production in 2002, the company had been known as "Reliant Motor Company" (or RMC for short) until the 1990s ...

who were developing the car for the Turkish

Otosan Ford Otomotiv Sanayi A.Ş. (''Ford Automotive Industry'') is an automotive manufacturing company based in Turkey that is equally owned by Ford Motor Company and Koç Holding. It was established in its current form in 1977, with original relation ...

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 is an annual motor show held by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders between 1903 and 2008 in England, and as The British Motor Show since 2021 by Automotion Events. Initially held in London at Th ...

. The two Anadol prototypes were held in Koç Holding's (which owns

) depot in Istanbul's Acıbadem district for nearly 25 years. Today, one of them is displayed at the Rahmi M. Koç Museum 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, 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