Managing Director – Bridge Classic Cars
Our 1905 Riley 9HP has been in the Bridge Classic Car workshop for quite some time now. Restoration work on a car like this is extremely complex and can only be done by expert classic car technicians.
Dave has been putting his close to five decades worth of experience to good use by getting more work done on this truly unique car. If you haven’t heard the story of our Riley 9HP before, then it’s one you should definitely make yourself familiar with.
Firstly, the fact that there are believed to be only 3 of these cars left in existence should be enough to grab the attention of any classic car enthusiast. One of the remaining three is in the Gaydon Motor Museum, one is thought to be in a private collection, and we have the third in our workshop which is the one Dave has been working on.
Initially, our 9HP was missing a radiator. While we searched for a way to source something that could be used as a replacement, we were extremely fortunate to be offered an unbelievably rare Riley 9HP radiator that had been found during a house clearance. Not only was this radiator a match for our Riley, but it was actually very likely the radiator that had originally been in the car.
While we may have had some good luck with the radiator, the rest of the Riley has been much more challenging to restore. As there are only 3 left, there are only 2 others we could potentially look at in order to see how the finished vehicle should look.
We were offered the opportunity to visit the Riley 9HP in Gaydon Motor Museum which we took and were able to get a whole load of photographs that would hopefully help us rebuild this incredible car. It’s these photos that Dave has been using as a reference to try and bring everything back together in its original form.
Relying on photos and a wealth of experience shows how skilled our classic car technicians really are. There aren’t too many people out there who could take on this type of work but, fortunately for us, we have experienced technicians like Dave who are determined to get the job done.
The most recent work Dave has completed on the car was making the water return pipes from the cylinder head, fitting the front stub axles with bearings, along with fitting the anti-tramp bars too.
It’s worth repeating one more time that our 1905 Riley 9HP is one of only 3 left in existence. We have one of the last remaining examples of this truly classic car and we look forward to seeing what the future holds for it.
