1930s Riley 1 1/2 (Riley 12/4) Kestrel - a pre war British car!

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These 1 and a half litre Rileys were very popular and it’s sometimes known as the 12/4 - which is named as such because of the 12 horse power rating.

No it doesn’t mean the engine is 12 horsepower but relates to the RAC taxation classes of the era. Again, it’s why you see cars like the Austin 10, the Morris 10. It’s all related to that taxation class and I believe for each additional horsepower so jumping from 10 to 11, you’d incur an additional £1 extra tax.

We touched briefly on this in the recent pre war Ford video.

After the Riley 9, the 12/4 or 1 and a half litre as we’re testing was one of the most popular of the pre-war Rileys. The Riley range can feel somewhat convoluted when you start looking at it and the 12/4 naming convention was done away with in 1934 and the 1 1/2 litre was launched in late 34 with the familiar trio of body options as per the 12/4 - so you got the Falcon, Kestrel and Lynx.

If you’re wondering why they switched it up from 12/4 to 1 and a half litre after the 1934 revision, it’s because they felt the 12/4 naming convention was too close to the 12/6 naming convention and they wanted the vehicles based as the 12/6 to have clear market distinction to the buyer.

The range is then completely overhauled once more in 1936 and that’s when you see a little more distinction come in and you see the Lynx and Falcon bodies change slightly but for the Kestrel as we’re testing here today, they move that on somewhat with the introduction of the 6-light body.

I talked earlier about the popularity of the 12/4 and later 1 and a half cars and Riley capitalised on it. They decided to introduce three new models and these are Merlin, Adelphi and Sprite.

This can feel awfully confusing on paper so a simple way to think about it is this: the 1 and a 1/2 is the engine and therefore the family tree and the main trunk and all these cars coming off it are essentially the branches.

There are many nuances, changes and upgrades pre war including a body change for the Falcon and a continental touring saloon - which ends up making everything rather complicated when you’re retelling the story or trying to sell it in to a buying public. Too much choice is never a good thing - but we’ll come back to that later.

Coming back to the engine, Riley were shrewd in their development and ensured it was a touch under 1500cc and the reason for this? So they could enter it into rallies and races.

Realistically, I could do a full hour long video on the Riley racing triumphs but in short, Riley were known for their prowess and a lot of this was down to their keen engine development.

In fact, the engine was first conceived in the early 30s to fill the gap between the 9 and 14/6 - Percy Riley was adamant the soon to launch 12/6 would do the trick but his brothers asked him to rethink and they then developed a new 4 cylinder block. This new block closely mirrored Percy’s 9 engine but was enlarged and refined to achieve greater power.

Interestingly it was also designed in a way it could’ve been dialled down to achieve a 10hp engine to replace the 9 - but this never happened.

It was rolled out for the 1934 cars and then tweaked for 1936 - to give them their due - Riley didn’t sit around and really strived for endless improvement and refinement and had a hunger for getting things spot on.

Recognising the potential for Riley, Nuffield bought the company in 1938 and immediately set out to make keen changes - which pre war largely saw a massive streamlining of the ranges and models to create a succinct line up.

I do think if the Second World War hadn’t happened, things might’ve been different, but all in all, Nuffield didn’t capitalise on the Riley name and quality as they should’ve and instead seemed to let the brand die out - with the last use of the Riley name really being on the ADO16 cars.

However, despite the Nuffield takeover and the quashing of the endless variants, they did keep the engine going and it powered the RMA/E cars after the war. In fact, it was continued until 1955 - over 20 years since it was conceived by the team at Riley.