Bond Bug: Three Wheeler

Cars

There are many things that, for children of the seventies, bring floods of nostalgia.

There was the quality TV comedy, the memories of power cuts and incessant news of industrial action: and there is the Raleigh Chopper and the Bond Bug.

And funnily enough, Austrian born designer Tom Karen was responsible for the last two. At least in part.

When Karen was working for Ogle Design a relationship with plastic fantastic manufacturers Reliant was born and boom: the lethal, orange harbinger of quirk was soon to grace British streets.

When the Bond Bug was eventually released in 1970 it charmed with the platform soled, leather booted times. It sold fairly well, was an instant icon of seventies pop culture – so much so that it helped Karen score the design job of sketching out Luke Skywalker’s speedster in George Lucas’s era defining movie Star Wars.

Design elements cross reference and bleed each to each. We just would not have wanted to go far in a car that made the Robin look like a sensible consumer choice.




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