Riley

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Riley

logo
legal form Limited Company
founding 1895 (as The Riley Cycle Company )
resolution 1969
Seat Coventry , UK
management William Riley (Founder)
Branch Automobile manufacturer

Riley logo
Registered share of Riley (Coventry) Ltd. dated May 17, 1924

Riley was an English automobile manufacturer specializing in the production of sports cars and which existed as an independent company until 1939. The product name existed as a brand until 1969.

history

Riley 4½ HP Tricar (1904)
Riley TT Sprite Special (1936)
A Riley Sprite from 1936 (at the wheel of actor Klaus Wildbolz )
Riley RMC Roadster (1949)

At the beginning, as with some other automobile manufacturers, there was the construction of bicycles. William Riley had already made his fortune with two-wheelers in Coventry . In 1897, his son Percy Riley constructed a so-called three-wheel voiturette from bicycle parts and a De Dion Bouton single cylinder . He didn't just do this out of a passion for innovation . It was then that the child labor ban came into force in England . If his father had previously been able to make a big deal with cheap labor, his son had to look around for a more profitable branch of production.

Motorized four-wheeled vehicles followed in 1900. In 1903, Riley began building its own drive units with a 517 cm³ V2 cylinder, which had either water or air cooling. Four years later, the designers took another step and offered the first four-wheeled Riley with 1034 cc and 9  hp , the first car with mechanical inlet valve control . The spoked wheels with central locking were also completely new. After this design was patented , many well-known automobile manufacturers, including Fiat , Renault and Mercedes , purchased their wheels from Riley for a certain period of time.

Percy Riley, the technical head of the company, continued to design pioneering detailed solutions and founded a new factory in Coventry with his brother Stanley in 1919 to produce the car that was to guarantee them a breakthrough for two decades: the Riley 10.8 "Redwing" was built in 1498 cm³ the high power of 35 HP for the time. It had light alloy pistons, modern electrical equipment and only six lubrication points. The two-seater sports version of the “Redwing” was particularly successful in the interwar years.

The company's best-known car on the continent, however, was the 1.1-liter Riley 9 "Monaco", which was produced since 1926 and was originally designed as a small family car thanks to the tuning of a Reid Railton and the driving skills of the racing driver Parry Thomas proven and popular sports car. At the beginning of the 1930s, it was above all the little red Riley racers who achieved successes in their respective classes in all kinds of sports car races and rallies .

As early as 1928, Riley brought out a six-cylinder and seven years later the eight-cylinder " Adelphi " model, but the main accent remained the small four-seaters and roadsters . However, they were produced in an uneconomical variety of types that exhausted the capital reserves. Even before the Second World War , William R. Morris took over the factories in 1939 in order to integrate them into their own group.

After the war, the future Formula 1 world champion Mike Hawthorn , among others, achieved his first successes in motorsport with a Riley. The construction of the large " Pathfinder " limousine was stopped in 1957. After that, BMC , later British Leyland, used the Riley brand, such as Wolseley or MG, until 1969 only for the better-equipped versions of the models that were otherwise sold as Austin and Morris.

Models 1907–1914

Type Construction period
Riley 9 1907-1911
Riley 10 1909-1914
Riley 12 / Riley 12/18 1907-1914

Models 1914–1940

Type Construction period
Riley 1 1/2 / Riley 1 1/2 (Adelphi + Falcon + Kestrel + Lynx + Merlin) 1936-1940
Riley 2 1/2 1937-1939
Riley 8/90 1935
Riley 9 / Riley 9 (Kestrel + Monaco) 1926-1935
Riley 10 1915-1916
Riley 8/10 1919-1928
Riley 11.9 / Riley 11/40 1924-1928
Riley 12/4 (Falcon + Kestrel) 1934-1935
Riley 12/6 1935
Riley 14-6 1929-1934
Riley 15/6 (Adelphi + Falcon + Lynx + Kestrel) 1934-1938
Riley 17th 1914-1923
Riley Alpine 1931-1933
Riley Brooklands 1928-1932
Riley MPH 1934-1935
Riley Sprite 1936
Riley Stelvio 1930-1934

Models 1946–1969

Riley 4/72 (1965)
Riley Elf, 1967
Type Construction period
Riley 1 1/2 liter 1946-1955
Riley 1.5 1957-1965
Riley 2 1/2 liter 1946-1953
Riley 2.6 1957-1958
Riley 4/68 1959-1961
Riley 4/72 1961-1969
Riley Elf (ADO 15) 1961-1969
Riley Kestrel 1100 (ADO 16) 1965-1967
Riley kestrel 1300 1967-1969
Riley Pathfinder 1953-1957

Web links

Commons : Riley  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Encyclopedia of the Automobile. ISBN 3-89350-534-2 , p. 348.