1980 Reliant Kitten DL Estate review from UK and Ireland

The GRP body, steel chassis and the interior trim were perfect, but the previous owner had bodged his own Reliant engine together from various other units, thus giving me a lot of headaches and ending up with more problems than there would otherwise have been. Nevertheless, even with a slightly dodgy engine I am still getting an average of about 60 miles to the gallon which can't be bad.

The turning circle of 23 feet is the most amazing feature of the car, but if you use this to its fullest as I tend to (it's great to be able to do U-turns on roads too narrow for any other cars to do the same. I was once in a traffic jam and decided to turn round and take a short cut; in the Kitten I just turned through 180 degrees with no trouble but the Mercedes S-Class behind me, on trying the same trick, ended up blocking the traffic and needing a five-point turn to achieve what the Kitten had done in one go), it does tend to wear out the steering rack pretty quickly and they aren't cheap to have reconditioned.

The Kitten is front engined and rear-wheel drive, unusually for a small car, and this makes it feel very much like a sports-car to drive. You sit very low to the ground and the power-to-weight ratio is in the order of 90 bhp per ton which is not bad for such an economical car.

The body is rustproof GRP and thus even though it is over twenty years old, with a bit of polish it can look brand new.

The side-opening rear door is not quite as practical as a hatchback, but the boxy body shape means 40 cubic fee of space behind the front seats which is better than many 'family' cars.