17/05/2010 - W de Forte enjoys the Life of Riley

RILEY RMB

There are those who think nothing about how to handle a motor car properly, anxious only to get from A to B. But these dullards are missing out on one of the true joys in life. To drive well at any speed, concentration is required; all the senses are alerted and there is co-ordination of body and brain. When I achieve this I feel part of the great whole. I fit in. Life makes sense.

New fangled driver aids such as power steering and synchro-mesh gearboxes greatly reduce the potential for such satisfaction but real joy can still be realised by the piloting of vintage and classic motor cars. They are wonderful time machines that take us back to another age when things were very different, and dare I say it, generally rather more agreeable.

Late last summer I was detailed to deliver a 2.5 litre Riley RMB to Raby Castle in County Durham. The early commencement of my great niece's nuptuals, in which the cream coloured car had a vital role to play and would inevitably steal the show, as classic cars usually do at these occasions, necessitated a daybreak departure from its village home in Yorkshire's West Riding.

'As Old as the Industry, as modern as the Hour' was once the motto of the Riley Motor Company, but JAC626 looked splendidly old fashioned as the doors of its timber motor house creaked open at sparrow croak that late August morn. That said, there could be no doubt the Riley RMB is still a powerfully attractive motor car. No trailer-borne specimen, the sixty-one--year-old vehicle revealed in the barn was clearly a regularly used example of the marque, and on the road it would no doubt prove the better for it. The fact its tweed jacketed and cravatted owner was none other than Riley RM Club Chairman Mr Philip Hallam also augured well.

RMs are the last thoroughbred Rileys and feature the firm's traditional swooping radiator and a distinctive fabric roof. The lines are based on pre-war BMW saloon owned by an employee who pranged his Bahnstormer and then rebuilt it at the works with a Riley front end. Riley MD Victor Riley reckoned the hybrid had a certain something and he used it as the basis of his post war range. It was blatant plagiarism but, as he later explained to me with a chuckle, the goons were hardly in a position to complain about it at the time!

The RM's pressed steel panels are fixed to a traditional ash frame built onto a strong box section chassis. Its torsion bar and wishbone front suspension and steering was inspired by the splendid Citroen Traction Avant, and hydraulic front and mechanical rear drum brakes were perfectly adequate in the 1940s. A pre-war engine that first saw service in the 1926 Riley Monaco saloon provided the urge. A total of 6903 RMBs were manufactured between 1946-1953 and there were 1050 examples of the mildly updated RMF which preceded the Pathfinder.

The RM's somewhat ingenious four cylinder engine was originally conceived by Victor's brilliant elder brother Percy who started building cars at 13 and was the mechanical brains behind the Coventry firm. Advanced in its day, it featured gear driven camshafts on the side of the crankcases from which short pushrods activated overhead valves. An RM engine that is out of sorts can be as rattly as a flag collector's box on a poor day, but JAC's well maintained unit emitted only a delightful wuffly noise as it settled to tick-over after I thumbed the bakelite starter. The car's glorious pre-war style dashboard came to life as I flicked on the panel lights and as air began to circulate in the cabin, the comfortable leather upholstery emitted a quite evocative period whiff which charmed the nostrils no end. Altogether the experience was just so right and full of quality.

After a nod from JAC's sleepy owner, first gear was engaged without fuss and I nosed the Riley's long and elegant bonnet out of its quarters and onto the highway. As expected, the steering was heavy at low speed but once above walking pace, the wheel became light and responsive in my hands. It was not yet 6am town so carriage driving was in order, at least to start with! Nice work with the clutch and throttle, gentle and early cog shifting and smooth braking, having foreseen the necessity for slowdown or stop, led to a smooth and quiet passage through rural villages en route to the Great North Road.

And, after pausing at a junction, by way of a test I started in top and accelerated gently to 60mph without using the low gears at all. A Royce or Bentley are the very best motors for this stunt but the Riley's flexible engine boasts the longest stroke of any post war car and the stupendously torquey RM performed the feat with aplomb. A passenger would have been quite unaware anything unusual had occurred.

But then, quite suddenly, the imps in me came out to play. Down went the loud pedal and I began to tear around the swervery at full chat. Cornering was not without roll but the Riley was up for the challenge and a demonic grin soon fixed itself on the de Forte phizzog.

The rack and pinion steering was fully up to the job and the Riley's suspension performed its task of tying the big car to the road but Blighty's by-lanes are increasingly ill-maintained and on one appalling patchwork apology for a road I hit a series of bumps and was was rather caught out by a fourpenny one. Unplanned arm exercise followed and there was, I am ashamed to say, a squeal of tyres as the rear end hung out over the white lines upon landing after a donkey back bridge. Flushed with embarrassment as I thought of the verbal clout I would have received had JAC's owner been on board, I knocked it off a little until I reached the A1. Upon reflection, a Riley RMB handles perfectly well, but in truth the smaller, faintly pug-like RMA is a better town and country lane car than its longer and larger engined brother.

Where the 2.5 litre car really excels is on the open road. 'Magnificent Motoring' was another Riley advertising slogan and the RMB is certainly a car for those seeking adventure on the King's Highway. Sharing the Great North Road at that early hour with just a handful of plodding merchant vehicles and an occasional modern allowed me to slip the big Riley off the leash. With a 2,443cc engine producing almost 100bhp the RMB is a quite outstanding goer and with its seven league boots fully on a true ton can be seen on the clock. For covering long distances at speed, it is still a capital motor car.

A long run in a good car going its best on the Great North Road has a marvellous tonic effect and can change a mood of blue depression to a feeling of being one of fortune's favourites. As the road flies towards the radiator, the strain brought about by the unseemly tempo of modern life drops away and approaching Scotch Corner your correspondent felt such a sense of wonderful well being that I must confess I began carolling like a lark!

Those of my generation may be becoming thin on the line, dear reader, and while most of my contemporaries are reduced to mumbling incoherently through toothless gums, I am sure that somewhere in their minds they are still young and vibrant. I know that in essence I am unchanged from the teenage boy who drove his dear Uncle Bof's Riley Gamecock on that historic road before the second war. In the RM on that summer morning in 2009 I was eighteen once again. That is the power of a fine classic motor car.