Topic: SOLVED: WTH # 074 - 1962 Ogle SX250

[sixtee5cuda]

For a point, give the year, make, and model of this car.  Also include what car it was based upon.

[Zerk]

Is this a Reliant Scimitar GT4, based on Ford Zephyr 2.6 litre inline 6 and other Ford bits?

[sixtee5cuda]

Its name is not Reliant, and it has no major Ford bits.

[Allan L]

I wanted to post this one, but have no decent photo. Well done!

[Zerk]

Is it a Middlebridge Scimitar? If it's something else entirely, I apologize for this redundancy.

[sixtee5cuda]

Not Middlebridge.  I had never heard of that part of the Scimitar history. 

(I didn't mention it specifically.  This car does not carry the name Scimitar)

[Zerk]

Not Middlebridge.  I had never heard of that part of the Scimitar history. 

(I didn't mention it specifically.  This car does not carry the name Scimitar)

Does it carry the name, "Ogle SX250?". And if it does, and was built in 1962, and based on the Daimler Dart, then my previous answers all overshot the mark. I feel like the omelet maker who has never seen an uncracked egg.

[sixtee5cuda]

Entirely correct, Zerk.  Another point for you.

After your Middlebridge post, I almost said "moving in the wrong direction", but you found the answer anyway.

[billtorrance9999]

At that time the Daimler Dart/SP250 roadster was not selling well - in the same market place as the E Type and about the same price, so no wonder?  Daimler commissioned the design study from David Ogle's Ogle design office.  Before it was ready Daimler was swallowed up by Jaguar, the Dart killed off and the lovely little 2.5 litre V* used in a bodge-up of the Mark 2 Jaguar.  Ogle reworked the design for the Reliant Scimitar so maybe got paid for it twice???

[Carnut]

And thankfully a great design wasn't wasted.  I always much preferred the earlier Coupé to the much more common GTE.

[sixtee5cuda]

My reading indicates, the SX250 was to be one of 6.  It was created under contract to Boris Forter, who was to find 4 or 5 friends to buy SX250s as well.  Those friends backed out, or never showed up.  Only 2 SX250s were built, which may include the prototype.

Another hitch in the SX250-Reliant story is, David Ogle was was killed in an auto accident before the SX250 was finished.  The Ogle Design company approached Reliant about building SX1000s.  Reliant was already developing the Sabre, and reached an agreement to use the SX250 design with very slight modifications.

[Allan L]

Yes, the SX250 was finished by Tom Karen who joined Ogle after David Ogle's death. I think it's fair to say that neither had the build quality one would expect of specialist cars but Ogle was and remains a design and prototyping organisation, not a coachworks much less a car producer.
One of the SX250s was smartened up for an Ogle 21st anniversary bash and (as a SP250 owner myself at the time) I asked if it were for sale - it wasn't and from what I later heard I had a lucky escape. Can't remember which one it was, but the puzzle car is 595 NJH, the second of the two cars built.

[Zerk]

Thanks for a first class puzzle! And thanks to everyone for filling in the blanks about Ogle, David Ogle, Tom Karen, the Daimler SP250, and the Reliant Scimitar.

[billtorrance9999]

Towards the end of its production life the SP250/Dart was selling so poorly that Daimler GAVE some away to various police forces around the UK.  My father was in charge of Traffic policing in the Glasgow area and they got four of them.  They were kitted out with bells and lights and the drivers (dad included) thoroughly enjoyed using them.  They were completely inadequate for this use however having little/no space for all the gear that they needed to carry - cones, barriers etc, so the trial was canned very quickly 

[Allan L]

Towards the end of its production life the SP250/Dart was selling so poorly that Daimler GAVE some away to various police forces around the UK.  My father was in charge of Traffic policing in the Glasgow area and they got four of them.  They were kitted out with bells and lights and the drivers (dad included) thoroughly enjoyed using them.  They were completely inadequate for this use however having little/no space for all the gear that they needed to carry - cones, barriers etc, so the trial was canned very quickly 

The police in Hertfordshire had some and had great fun catching speeding motorists. Bell certainly but I don't remember additional lights. I don't think they carried much gear and they used hoods, not hardtops as even a police flat'at was too high in the hardtop. They had auto transmission for some reason, maybe an extra aspect of what Bill says, because those were selling even worse than the manual 'box version.

[Carnut]

The Met (London's Metropolitan Police force) had them as well (with wire wheels!; the picture in the middle looks like one of Glasgow's); I didn't know about the other forces..:

[Tom_I]

A period photo of Boris Forter in the second of the two SX250s, which he commissioned for his own use.

[D-type]

Did the Eagle * feature a police SP250 as one of their centre spreads.  Or is my memory being its usual fickle self?


* for non-British members, the Eagle was the British comic - the one that featured Dan Dare on the cover.

[qwaszx]

very nice silhouette for a british car!