Back to back: unspoiled Riley Nines

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

When The Royal Air Force Museum at the former Hendon Aerodrome in London is used as a location for a sale of motorcars and automobilia you may expect some fitting stuff. And, yes, Bonhams manages to offer another great number of lots with plenty of interesting material for the passionate of PreWarCars.

Even though incomplete, this lot is ever so appealing to ourselves: Prewar bound volumes of The Motor in lovely green bindings. But focus on the cars themselves, we picked out two Rileys – both Nines that have kept their original bodies, or so it seems. In case of the 9hp that isn’t all too obvious as so many of them were turned into aluminium bodied low-slung Specials with pointed tails and cycle wings, not in the last place in the last decade or so. This leaving unscathed Nines with standard bodies rarer than their sporting equivalents nowadays. The term ‘body snatchers’ has fallen more than once here… It is a bit of a revelation to see two Riley Nines in what seems to be their original guise.

First of them is a Kestrel of 1935 in brilliant fastback saloon shape and with the pre-selector fitted from new. Between the late 1950s and 2007, it is said to have been owned into one family, with the body having undergone a restoration in the 1970s. The four-cylinder engine was rebuilt with a new block much more recently and the car comes with recent bills totalling some £20,000, estimating £8,000 to 12,000 seems cheap. It’s a car we wouldn’t change anything to, from the patinated paint to the worn green leather interior. Just perfect.

The other Nine is rather nice too though. It’s a Gamecock Sports Tourer of 1932 that was fully restored. According to the seller, just some 40 cars of this type are known to survive, with this one having been bought as a restoration project back in 2011. Praise to the man who didn’t get rid of the Tourer body and fully restored this one as it left the Riley works, copying the body from the original components. Again, it wasn’t cheap, and a grand total of £64,000 in bills is said to come with the car. Wow! Again that makes you wonder that the estimated sale at £25,000 to 30,000 is on the low side.

So… which one would be your favourite?

Words by Jeroen Booij. Pictures courtesy Bonhams Motor Cars.

Kommentar abgeben...