HEADING DOWN the lumpety-bumpety track, which leads from the Kitten’s garage to the road, I remember Malcolm Lamsley’s son, John and the expression on his face. Specifically just after he asked the question: “So, has he taken you out in it yet” – there was a sense of mischief about it which was slightly troubling me.

    As Mal turns out onto the road, I’m about to find out why John had that facial expression. It’s basically, what happens when you fit a 270bhp Duratec into a Reliant Kitten, the Robin’s less infamous four-wheeled brother. Sat on the floor with legs outstretched and buttocks only inches ahead of the rear wheels, Mal checks the rear view for signs of Gez and the Dep-O diesel jalopy. At first, he’s being sensible, but soon temptation proves too much – he nails the throttle and the cockpit is filled with the possessed howl of a throttle-bodied Duratec.

    The thought process goes something like this. First gear: crikey, this is pretty quick. Second gear: actually this has to be one of the fastes... Third gear: bejezuz, this so ferocious it’s uncomfortable... Oh shit, oh shit, is this acceleration ever going to stop...? Bugger, bugger, bugger, there’s a bend ahead and we’re still accelerating. Is that a scythe I can see...? System 404 error, end of rational thought transmission – aarrrrgggggghhhh

    My guts somersault whilst whatever speed we’re doing is proving so much that it feels like my skeleton is intent on self preservation and it feels like it’s trying to bail out by escaping through my sphincter. The Norfolk roads are pretty bumpy, but the Kitten hangs on.

    The most disconcerting thing is that because it’s so narrow, as a passenger you feel as if you’re practically in the centre of the lane and that we’re about to side-swipe oncoming cars. Heaven knows what passers-by must think, being passed by a curious-looking little projectile with such a big angry soundtrack that it sounds like Satan’s running late for his dinner. My eyelids are just about to grab hold of one another with sheer fright, when we start to slow down and pull over.

    I get out feeling green about the gills and shaky of knee. So, if my dodgy maths is correct, that is what a 340bhp per tonne Kitten feels like.

    Now, of all the questions that I can ask, there is only one place to start – why? “It was a dream between me and the boy, to buy a little car which we could make go fast – and the Kitten was the ideal size,” says Mal. 

    “The car was down in Essex and a friend of mine spotted it in a garden. He knocked on the door and the fella had been trying to get rid of it because the engine had blown up and scrapmen weren’t interested in them because they’re fibreglass. The fella said ‘if you can take it away, you can have it’ so my mate it hooked it on the back of his van and dragged it up to me; and it lay in my garden for about five or six years before I decided to do anything with it.”

 

   The first decision Mal and John had to make, involved which engine would spice up the Kitten’s performance. Originally, they thought that a 1300 Crossflow would make quite a big improvement over the stock 850cc Reliant engine, but: “Then I got talking to my engine-builder, Paul Jackson of BPJ Services in Hereford. He told me that Crossflows and Pintos were from the old days and that we know live in a Zetec and Duratec world. A 1600 Zetec was suggested but when we looked at the figures, I thought why not go for something beefier like a 2.3-litre Duratec...?”