Riley One-Point-Five - the 50s car meant to replace the Morris Minor!

Riley One-point-five

Made from 1957 to 1965, the Riley One-Point-Five’s story began in the early 50s when Nuffield which had Riley as part of the automotive family merged with Austin and became the British Motor Corporation.

When all the brains on both sides were merged, which meant the 1.5 as we’re out in today, wasn’t a completely fresh idea. The Morris Minor had been an enormous hit and keen to keep building on the success and grab of the market share, Issigonis had been working on a replacement modelled on the Morris Minor.

Here’s the thing though, with the merger, came two design teams and in one corner you had Gerald Palmer, the man who gave us cars like Magnette, the Javelin and the Pathfinder and in the other corner, we had Dick Burzi. Now Burzi had an interesting career path pre BMC and had worked on Lancia’s pre-war; he was Leonard Lord’s favourite and got the nod to work on the Minor replacement.

So incensed at this perceived injustice based on favouritism, Gerald Palmer then left BMC.

Burzi then steps up to the plate and gets designing and creates the one point five, but with an oil crisis I mention later on and the growing sales of the Minor, BMC made a wise decision not to bin off the Morris Minor; which ironically outlives this car!

The final product is then tweaked and instead of being a like for like low in the range motor, they decide to jazz it up a bit and create what is then known as a small, sporting saloon.

With so many brands under the roof of BMC, the teams in charge decide to make it the Wolseley 1500 and Riley one-point-five; each tweaked slightly in styling to marry up to the usual brand styling. A nice early example of badge engineering to some degree.

Both cars though were based on the Minor: with a floor pan and monocoque construction amended by Issigonis. The suspension was lifted from the minor and is front torsion bar, wishbones and dampers with rear leaf springs with dampers.

The brakes, engine and gearbox were taken from elsewhere in the BMC family and For reference in case you’ve ever driven one before, the gearbox is the MGA type 4 speed gearbox. Brakes are like pretty much anything of this size of the era and they’re Girling Hydraulic with 9 inch drums to front and 8 inch to rear.

Engine is the 1.5 B series 1489cc giving 68bhp.

The performance was good - some motoring publications have it billed down at 82/83 from tests at the time but official figures gave 87 miles per hour. The car did 0 to 60 in 18.5 seconds and the fuel economy was fair, at 25-30 miles per imperial gallon.

Overall, a pleasing prospect then and now.