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The story of three disaster’s, the Riley Two point Six, the Riley Pathfinder and Gerald Palmer.
The Riley Two-point Six, succeeded the Riley Pathfinder in 1957, it is a very mixed story because the Pathfinder was a true Nuffield Product, whereas the Two point six was in truth a BMC badged model.
In truth there was not a lot of difference between the two Riley’s, the main one being Nuffield’s Riley engine was dropped in favour of BMC’s “C” Series straight six of 2639cc and produced 101bhp, the other difference was that the grill was fixed on the later model, on the Pathfinder it went up with the bonnet.
Both cars had duo tone and mono tone paint jobs, they looked very stylish to say the least, but that didn’t help sell the Two point six, the total production figure for two years was 2000 cars.
It must be pointed out that the Riley and the Wolseley 6/90 series three were identical except for the badge and minor detail to the interior.
Both the cars were so bad that Leonard Lord sacked the designer one Gerald Palmer, now Gerald had been responsible for the Jowett Javelin in 1946 and as a result was offered the job of chief designer for the MG, Riley and Wolseley in 1949, obviously a man of great talent Gerald was snapped up by Vauxhall, sad as it may be he joined the team designing the Viva, he retired from the industry in 1972.
Those who came in contact with him say he was courteous and very thoughtful, he was apparently well liked, it wasn’t until his auto biography was being written it became obvious he had been eclipsed in the public eye by Alex Issigonis, though the implications of that is that Gerald Palmer
May well have been head and shoulder above, but that is conjecture.
The Riley Pathfinder, well known for it’s obsession of not actually going where the driver expected it to, so much so it was nicknamed the Ditchfinder, well that is about as good a start for any car, but it wasn’t all bad as we shall see.
The last true Nuffield designed Riley with a genuine Riley engine, the twin cam Big 4 with twin SU’s, now the car looked like a unitary bodied car, it wasn’t it had a separate steel chassis, at the back was coil springs with a pan hard rod which was a lot of the Pathfinder’s problem, at the end they actually changed to a leaf spring rear, the front had torsion bar independent system.
Braking was servo assisted drums 12inch, you could just about manage 100mph with a 0-60 time of 16.8, naturally a big car used large amount of fuel round about 20 to the gallon, there was a 4 speed manual box or later on a three speed auto.
Now the Pathfinder was a bit quirky in the gearbox area as the gear lever was stuck down on the right by the driver’s door, just the right place for it to disappear up ones trouser leg, I gather quite a few gentlemen actually fell out of the Riley very unceremoniously. Like me you are no doubt sitting there thinking what happened with Left Hand Drive cars, well from what I could gather the gear lever ended up in the centre, where it should have been in the first place. Now some of you might be Wolseley fans and I have a picture of a Wolseley 6/90 with a right hand gear change, it certainly wasn’t the norm.
The steering was cam and roller type which made it under steer to say the least. Apart from that it was a nice proportioned car and with the usual Riley elegance inside.
I would think it would be an asset to anyone’s collection of Classics, they made 5152 before it was withdrawn and the dreaded BMC badged clones arrived,
Interestingly enough the Wolseley is in very short supply according to an article there are only two known examples left which are road worthy, which is a great shame.
Right have a happy holiday and don’t forget the tractor raffle see you soon regards Ted
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