Pride over passion for Reliants
They're both in their 60s, used to live in tower blocks and run three-wheeled Reliants, but that's where the similarities between Smethwick grandad Mick Greasley and Del Trotter end.
Because while the star of legendary BBC comedy Only Fools & Horses had just the one Reliant, 64-year-old car enthusiast Mick has owned around 40 of the Tamworth-built cars, dubbed by some "the plastic pigs".
Former toolsetter Mick first fell in love with Reliants in the late 1960s and has owned dozens of them since.
Just like Del Boy, he started off with a Reliant Regal van – not a Robin as fact-enemies repeatedly refer to the Trotter three-wheeler.
Mr Greasley's current vehicles are a four-wheeled 1983 Reliant Fox, and an early 70s Reliant Ant three-wheeler pickup.
Son Michael, aged 39, also has the bug and drives an E-reg Rialto three-wheeler emblazoned with Playboy logos. His other car is a red Robin with racing spoiler.
Reliant was founded in 1935 and found its real fame in the 1960s with fibreglass-bodied three-wheel cars that motorbike-license holders could legally drive.
The company moved from Tamworth to Burntwood in 2001 but closed soon afterwards.
In the late 1960s it was his young family that forced Mr Greasley to abandon motorbikes in favour of Reliants.
The Jasper Carrotts and Jeremy Clarksons of this world may have nothing but scorn for the smaller Reliants but Mr Greasley is deaf to their guffaws.
"They can take the mick all they want," he says, pointing to his 850cc Fox.
My every day car regularly tows trailerloads to the scrapyard and caravans," he said.
Nationally, the Reliant Owners Club has some 700 members, and one-tenth of those are in the Birmingham Branch which holds regular meetings at Shirley Institute in School Road, Shirley, Birmingham.
The next is on September 15, from 7.30pm.
