A Brooklands-Model Riley 9
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Sir,
I read Mr. Hewitt’s letter with more than a little surprise, for I am the owner of Brooklands Riley PG 472 (or what’s left of it). I acquired the chassis and some other bits in 1967 from one Philip Palmer who had built up one Brooklands out of two and I had the bits that were left over. The chassis (No. 8055) had a body frame of angle iron welded to it! (the things some people do!) which I promptly attacked with a hacksaw and I think I exchanged the body with a Treen-owner for a bottle of the hard stuff. However the frame is badly damaged at the swan neck on one side, which leads me to believe that it was involved in an accident between 1948 and 1965 (see below) which probably destroyed the original body.
In 1967 I had correspondence with a Prof. Stevenson, then at Aberdeen University, who had owned the car from 1939 to 1948; he sold it to someone at de Havilland’s at Hatfield. Prof. Stevenson supplied the photograph at Cambridge in 1941. The car still had its body in 1948. It turned up at an auction at Beaulieu with the angle-iron body, in 1965.
The photograph shows the standard roadgoing steel body with a long tail and having the o/s door longer than the n/s one, this feature being to ease access under the low steering wheel, which may have led to the remark about long doors in the Autocar article, if the reporter only looked at one side of it. Prof. Stevenson said that the car had an aluminium instrument panel that was engine-turned; could this, I wonder, indicate that the car was specially prepared for a Concours class at the Brighton Motor Rally If anyone can fill in the gaps, 1931-1939, and 1948-1965, I shall be extremely grateful.
Over the years I have collected enough bits to commence the restoration of this car, though I still need a lot of bits, and I hope to commence this shortly. Some time ago I drew a working plan of the long-tailed body from GK 4407, which was owned for many years by Edgar Kehoe of Liphook, but it was sold about four years ago and has completely vanished — or has it?
Bordon PETER PARKS Hampshire
Area Sec., Riley Register