The Riley Motor Company

Given the Riley brand’s turbulent first few years it’s a miracle that we had Riley cars at all. William Riley and his sons juggled companies and products for the first few years of the 20th Century, before a more cohesive organization formed in the 1920s. Riley was acquired by Nuffield in 1938 and became part of BMC in 1952, before its inevitable demise in 1969. In 1890, William Riley diversified out of the weaving trade and purchased the Bonnick Cycle Company of Coventry, ostensibly to provide a secure future for his four sons. In 1896 it was renamed the Riley Cycle Company Limited and cycle gear maker Sturmey Archer was acquired as well.

In 1898, Riley’s middle son, Percy, built his first car at age 16. It was done in secret, because his father William did not want the distraction of car manufacture. Little is known about Percy Riley’s first car, but was way ahead of its time in featuring Percy’s design for mechanically-operated cylinder valves, at a time when other engines depended on the vacuum effect of the descending piston to suck each inlet valve open. His father didn’t appreciate Percy’s mechanical genius. That genius was demonstrated years later when Benz developed and patented a mechanically-operated inlet valve system. Benz licensed the system, but British auto-makers were already using Percy’s design and the courts judged that the Riley invention comfortably pre-dated the Benz design, so British car makers didn’t have to pay Benz any royalties… read more >