By Royal appointment

The overhauled Middlebridge Scimitar continuation was championed by Princess Anne with this, her eighth and final GTE

- CHARLIE CALDERWOOD

It's one of the most tired clichés in the classic car world. Few vehicles have a famous owner that looms as large in its popular memory as the Reliant Scimitar GTE and Princess Anne. But this isn't a Reliant. Her final Scimitar, a car the Princess owned from new until 2023, is one of the 79 built, after considerable improvement, by Middlebridge Scimitar Ltd. It is surely the ultimate.

In truth, the House of Windsor's connection to the Scimitar starts before Anne and the GTE. Ogle Design and Pilkington Glass collaborated to build the one-off Scimitar GTS for the 1965 Earls Court motor show, adding a rounded glass shooting-brake-style rear to the existing coupé. After its trip down to the Turin Salon later the same year, Prince Philip borrowed the prototype as his personal car for two years - at exactly the same time as a young Princess Anne was coming of age. When asked which car she'd like as her 20th-birthday present, a Scimitar sports estate was the reply.

By the time the GTE arrived as a production model in 1968, that Triplex safety-glass top had disappeared. Ogle design chief Tom Karen. instead penned a long, flat roof that kicked up at the back for a lift-up rear window. Excluding the odd coachbuilt shooting brake, this was the first sporting estate car with a hatchback. The Scimitar GTE quietly created a successful niche for itself, so much so that the coupé on which it was based was discontinued in 1970. Other manufacturers eventually came to compete in the space, with the Volvo 1800ES, Lotus Elite, Lancia Beta HPE and Jensen GT, but it's the Scimitar GTE that remains the most famous example of the genre.