Anyone Have a Picture of Riley to Show??

[TO THE FLOOR]

Could someone please show me a picture of a Riley..Thanks Scott

[mk1]

[TO THE FLOOR]

Ok with the extended boot??

[mk1]

[TO THE FLOOR]

Thank you.

It must have made an impression. I have only seen 1 of those...in the late 80's

[Pete]

It must have made an impression.

Not in the U.S obviously! Sold quite a few over here though. A Mini with a decent boot, must have gone down quite well at the time! How did they compare on price with a Mini though?

[Old English White]

Does the owner of the second car do a LOT of night-time reversing

I suppose the Elf was never officially imported to the USA? Quite a reasonable number were built here along with its slightly less posh cousin the Wolseley Hornet.

[Alex]

Actually, there are usually a handful of Elfs and Hornets at the big Mini Meets in the States - Suzy & I drove one to MME 2003 on our honeymoon, and I often borrow a Hornet to drive. An Elf won car of the show in 2013.

Brian Owens who was reponsible for the concours and show-n-shine at MME for donkeys years (and has a trophy named after him) had a customised Hornet that went every year.

[360gts]

To my knowledge (could be wrong) BMC never exported the LWB variants to N. America.
Now, having said that...I do have a genuine LHD Elf here that was (supposedly shipped to Montreal by mistake). This is according to my uncle who owned the local dealership. This Elf...(Yellow/blue)
was up for grabs by BMC Canada...my uncle in his stupidity...said he would take it. It arrived in Calgary around March 1962 and...sat on the lot in Calgary till early 64. He called it the worst looking car BMC ever made!!!!
No one wanted it. First, there was the color....then, the price!
It was much more expensive than a regular mini. He ended up selling if for cost to a lady here who then traded it back in around June 1973. It has been here in my shop ever since...35K miles on it.
Still as it was back in the 60's...no rust...floors are perfect. Interior is ratty but it still starts and runs well. Fully documented ...from it left the sales room till where it is now. I suppose it would be classified as a bit of a rare duck as far as Elf's/Hornets are concerned.
(My uncle called the "ugly duckling" LOL!)
As I said...there may have been a few more that made it over here but the Elf/Hornet were never intended to be exported to N. America.

[cheleker]

To The Floor, If you ever make it to the western part of the state, come visit. I'll show you Mk I, II and III Elf Minis...and a South African Mk3. The Mk I is one of the blue over yellow ones. The Elf and Hornet are not LWB Minis, by the way.

[360gts]

...yes, they aren't LWB but they are longer...just a technicality....

[swindrum]

Our "racing" Hornet is a North American car, factory LHD

[mab01uk]

Some interesting thoughts about the introduction of the Elf/Hornet below.....taken from the AROnline 'Mini Development History' pages:-

"12 October 1961 saw the announcement of two more variations on the Mini theme, the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet. These were the posh Minis with Riley the slightly more upmarket.
According to LJK Setright they were designed, ‘…to appeal to those small minded snobs who found the idea of a Mini intriguing but the name of Austin or Morris offensive and the evidence of austerity.’ Jeff Daniels wrote, in 1980, harshly of the cars. ‘The Wolseley Hornet and Riley Elf are awful reminders of what happened when every BMC dealer and marque manager demanded his version of the Mini.’

The Elf/Hornet employed an extended boot and vertical fins. At the front they both had a vertical grille and wood trim in the interior as well as more chrome than the standard Mini’s. Of course when Jeff Daniels wrote his words, the Rover badge adorned the imposing five door Rover SD1 executive car and the Austin Metro was about to launched. He couldn’t have possibly imagined a Rover badged Metro…

Some journalists were just as harsh when the cars were current. Small Car magazine, soon to morph into CAR wrote: ‘We guess it’s no exaggeration to say that the first Issigonis Wolseley Hornet was among the ugliest, most uncomfortable and least desirable cars ever offered to the great British public. At any rate the one we tested in the winter of 1962 so disappointed us we couldn’t bring ourselves to write a word about it.’

Alec Issigonis seems to have distanced himself from these models and delegated development to the engineers working under him and BMC’s senior stylist, the Argentinean born Dick Burzi. The Elf/Hornets were shamelessly aimed at women drivers as a sort of miniaturized Jaguar or Rover and seemed to epitomise the kind of Britain that was fading away as the 1960s progressed."
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/cars/mi ... ry-part-1/

[Supersonic]

Here are photographs of the more powerful Riley 1100 / 1300 model

Alan

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