Category: Classic Cars

Although this story is about the RM series of Rileys which did not appear until 1945, the real heyday for Riley cars was in the 1920s and 1930s when the company made its reputation with a series of well-built saloons and small sports cars which were true thoroughbreds of their time. With these cars the Riley company, which was founded in 1898, built up a strong racing record but, by the late 1930s, finances were looking shaky and the Nuffield organisation took the company over in 1938. Even under the… Read more

Despite good looks and excellent engineering, the Australian Six was one of the great failures of motoring history. The story started when Frederick Hugh Gordon, a motor trade figure who claimed to have imported and sold the first Ford in Australia, reasoned that a locally assembled car could sell for much less than comparable imported models. In 1917 Gordon visited the US and met Louis Chevrolet who, at great expense, gave not only engineering advice but the names of all companies supplying parts for the Chevrolet Light Six. In 1918… Read more

Right from the beginning of the 1950s a number of American motoring enthusiasts were keen to match the European mastery of the road-racing technique. Many of them built small Americanised sports cars but only Briggs Cunningham was successful and achieved fame from his attempts. Cunningham built several different models of cars but most observers agree that his best effort was the C4R. This car featured a tubular chassis with strong side members and small, lightweight cross-members but was hardly state-of-the-art when compared with the racing chassis built into most of… Read more

The name Allard came into the motoring history books in 1936 when Sydney Allard, a London Ford motor dealer with a penchant for motor sport, including motor racing, decided to build for himself the Allard Special. Based on a Ford V8 chassis and with other Ford parts to provide the running gear Allard encased the whole thing in a cut down Bugatti body. He, as well as others, was obviously pleased with the results of this unusual combination because he went on to build a further 11 of these cars… Read more

The Bucciali was a product of two young French brothers, Angelo and Paul-Albert Bucciali. Initially they became obsessed with the new sport of flying and Paul-Albert became a stunt pilot. When World War I started Paul-Albert joined one of France’s elite fighter squadrons and at the end of the war they became interested in making motor cars as did a number of other Frenchmen. The Bucciali brothers’ first cars were more like cyclecars with two-cylinder two-stroke engines. They carried the name Buc but as only around 120 cars were produced… Read more