William Riley bought a Coventry cycle maker in 1890, and the business became the Riley Cycle Company in 1896. His son Percy built his first car in 1898, at the age of sixteen, and the family moved from cycles and tricars into proper motor cars in the early years of the twentieth century.
The Riley Nine of 1926, with its advanced twin-camshaft engine, was the car that made the company’s name, and Rileys were successful in racing and trials through the late 1920s and 1930s. But the company overreached with too many models, and in 1938 it was bought by William Morris, Lord Nuffield, who passed it to Morris Motors.
In early 1949 Riley production was moved from Coventry to the MG works at Abingdon, where the RM series was built. Under BMC, later Rileys increasingly shared their bodies with Wolseley, Morris and Austin models, from the One-Point-Five to Riley versions of the Mini (the Elf) and the 1100 (the Kestrel). In July 1969 British Leyland announced the immediate end of Riley production.
