This is the oldest known surviving Riley motor vehicle, known officially as the Royal Riley Tricycle. It was displayed on Riley’s stand at the 1899 National Cycle Show at the Crystal Palace.

After William Riley’s Coventry-based business changed from ribbon weaving to making bicycles in 1896, thoughts turned to motorised vehicles after his son, Percy who was in his late teens, designed and finished building a four-wheeled motor car in 1898. 

By the following year, however, motorised tricycles rather than motor cars were on sale by the Riley Cycle Company, inspired by the French De Dion Bouton tricycles of that period. They were manufactured for the next few years along with pedal cycles, motorcycles and quadricycles, until by 1904 it was clear that a fresh design for a tricar was needed instead. 

The single-cylinder engine in this tricycle is of the De Dion type, manufactured under license by the Cudell company of Aachen in Germany. The tricycle was discovered in 1955 in a poor state inside a barn in Hampshire by Squadron-Leader Harry Knight. He subsequently restored it to running order and it was later acquired for the Museum’s collection.