Why is it that, given a nice easy way to do things, some people (who, me?) will go out looking for trouble. There's no rational reason why somebody who has a perfectly good Renault that, although boring, does everything asked of it, would buy a quirky three-wheeler, especially when the limitations of that missing wheel had been made abundantly clear to him. But I did.
All that I can plead in mitigation is that there's a fine line between "interesting" and "nasty", and the Reliant and the Bond were opposite sides of that line. Not only that, but I owned a genuine museum piece; a Bond almost identical to mine is in the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum near Atlanta.
Despite appearances, the Bond Minicars were not only quirky, but also rather clever. Although the single wheel was at the "wrong" end, the weight distribution made the handling quite good. So much of the unloaded weight was at the front that on the rare occasions that I needed to lift the rear end, it was very easy to do so by hand. Actually, I would lift it with one hand and put a wooden stool under the body with the other hand. No kidding.
The front end was where just about everything was fitted. At some time in the past, somebody had fitted a larger, and non-standard, engine to mine. So not only did I have reverse drive, I also had the large, high-performance Villiers 197cc single-cylinder two-stroke engine. It must have put out six or seven horsepower, and hustled the Bond along nicely at 50mph. (The last of the series, the Mark G, had a 250cc twin-cylinder engine and was a real speed demon). The engine was mounted directly on a motorcycle transmission, which was connected directly to the front wheel -- yep, front wheel drive. The only problem with this arrangement was that when you turned the steering wheel, you were moving everything; the wheel, plus the exhaust, gearbox, clutch, engine and ancillary equipment attached to it. Not surprisingly, the steering was extremely heavy, which was a surprise in a car that you could lift the back of with one hand.
The body was surprisingly advanced, too. An exquisitely designed aluminum monocoque structure allowed this to be a convertible body intended to carry the weight of four people (two of them needed to have short legs) with outstanding light weight and rigidity.
That's not to say that it felt advanced form the driver's seat, though. The exhaust terminated close to the driver's feet, and you felt every power stroke as a solid hammer blow. The body had to be rigid and strong to take this vibration. The fuel filler had obviously been designed by somebody with a sense of humor, because it was located under the hood, directly above where the exhaust would be when the steering was straight. If you forgot to turn the wheel before filling up you were rewarded with the sound of Tss! Tsss! Tssss! as drops of gasoline vaporized where they fell onto the hot muffler.
And, although the basic design was advanced, it still used British technology of the time. Roadside repairs were easy, but frequent. At this time, I worked for a company that had two locations, about two miles apart, and several of us had to move between the locations several times a day. After I'd had the Bond for a while the response to my offer of a ride from one location to the other would usually be "Which car do you have today?". I never broke down more than twice in the two-mile trip.
Some Bonds were started by opening the hood and kicking down on a motorcycle-style kick start. Most were started from the driver's seat by enthusiastically pulling a handle attached to a cable. I was lucky, mine had electric starting, which also meant that it had reverse. How so? Well, if you pushed the key in before twisting it, the DynaStart would run backwards. Since it was a 2-stroke, it didn't care a lot which way it was turning (some had a second set of points to take care of the timing in reverse). The result was that my Bond could go as fast backwards as it could forwards, although I never cared to investigate this. Actually, the Bond didn't really need a reverse anyway, because the front wheel would turn a little more than 90 degrees, allowing it to turn in a circle whose radius was actually less than its wheelbase.