During the summer of 1966 as a family we became the proud owners of a brand new Reliant Regal, not to be mistaken with the 1970’s Reliant Robin, our new purchse came in Rebel Red, a grand title for the 600cc little car. My dad had been a motor cyclist who had promoted himself to a motorbike and sidecar during the late fifties when my brother and I arrived on the scene, the next natural progression was the Reliant for two reasons, fistly my dad could drive the car on his motorbike licence and secondly the road fund licence was the same price as the the motorbike and sidecar, not the excessively priced alternative for “proper” cars. There was one slight problem, the principles of making this new car move was nothing like riding a motorbike and I remember many a white knuckle ride as a young lad.
The Reliant had three major issues, firstly and perhaps most importantly, it only had three wheels and all the people used to driving cars with a wheel at each corner were convinced that they would roll over on corners. They were very light indeed and I can speak from experience, that travelling in the car in high winds was no fun at all. The third issue was that they were made from fibreglass, a massive selling point, when metal cars were rusting like nobodies business.
During the twelve years that we owned three different Reliant Regals the only problems we ever had with there being three wheels was that whilst drivers with the luxury of four wheels could straddle potholes, we nearly always hit them, mercifully, while my mum worried that the car would burst into flames, being made of fibreglass we never came remotely close to being englulfed, and despite my brother and I learning to drive in the three wheeler, we never came close to rolling the thing.
There is a saying that all good things come in three’s, I can’t imagine going back to driving the little red car from 1966 and after thousands of miles of driving a range of four wheeled cars, I am now in the category of those people who might question the safety of our little Reliant, although my parents took us all over the place in those little cars. Today is Trinity Sunday, a day when Christians around the world remember the three points of the trinity, God the Father, God the Son (Jesus, the Christ) and God, the Holy Sprit. A muslim once said to me “you Christain’s don’t half complicate things” he said “we have God and that is it!” I have often thought of that comment and I still hold to the importance of God, the creator of the world, the one who breathed life into being. I value so much the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel stories and his example to us, there is value in our belief that God so loved the world that he actually dwelt among us as a human being. Finally, I think that it is essential to my faith that God is Spirit and is not some remote deity, or a figure from history, but God who is around and within me.
Do all the best things come in threes? I will always be thankful for the Reliant Motor Company, my dad was able to travel in warmth with his family and there are whole areas of the country, I might never have visited, were it not for that little car and I have many, many treasured memories and am still around to tell the tale. Would I trade my car today for the Reliant Regal? I guess not. Am I still committed to the Trinity? Absolutely, and will say those famous words recorded by St Paul.
May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love of God, and the Fellowhip of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore. Amen