Editing Riley Motor (section)

==Riley Cycle Company==
[[File:Riley1907.jpg|thumb|The 4-wheel Riley exhibited at the 1907 Birmingham Show by Riley Cycles Ltd]]
The business began as the Bonnick Cycle Company of [[Coventry]], England. In 1890 during the pedal cycle craze that swept Britain at the end of the 19th century William Riley Jr. who had interests in the textile industry purchased the business and in 1896 incorporated a company to own it named The Riley Cycle Company Limited.<ref>Riley (Coventry) Limited. ''The Times'', Thursday, 18 January 1934; pg. 18; Issue 46655</ref> Later, cycle gear maker [[Sturmey Archer]] was added to the portfolio. Riley's middle son, Percy, left school in the same year and soon began to dabble in [[automobile]]s. He built his first car at 16, in 1898, secretly, because his father did not approve. It featured the first mechanically operated inlet valve. By 1899, Percy Riley had moved from producing [[motorcycle]]s to his first prototype four-wheeled quadricycle. Little is known about Percy Riley's first motor car. It is, however, well attested that the engine featured mechanically operated cylinder valves at a time when other engines depended on the vacuum effect of the descending piston to suck the inlet valve(s) open. That was demonstrated some years later when [[Karl Benz#Toward Daimler-Benz and the first Mercedes-Benz in 1926|Benz]] developed and patented a mechanically operated inlet valve process of their own but were unable to collect royalties on their system from British companies; the courts were persuaded that the system used by British auto-makers was based on the one pioneered by Percy, which had comfortably anticipated equivalent developments in Germany.<ref name=Motor196911/> In 1900, Riley sold a single three-wheeled automobile. Meanwhile, the elder of the Riley brothers, Victor Riley, although supportive of his brother's embryonic motor-car enterprise, devoted his energies to the core bicycle business.<ref name=Motor196911/>

Riley's founder William Riley remained resolutely opposed to diverting the resources of his bicycle business into motor cars, and in 1902 three of his sons, Victor, Percy and younger brother Allan Riley pooled resources, borrowed a necessary balancing amount from their mother and in 1903 established the separate Riley Engine Company, also in Coventry.<ref name=Motor196911/> A few years later the other two Riley brothers, Stanley and Cecil, having left school joined their elder brothers in the business.<ref name=Motor196911/> At first, the Riley Engine Company simply supplied engines for Riley motorcycles and also to [[Singer (car)|Singer]], a newly emerging motorcycle manufacturer in the area,<ref name=Motor196911/> but the Riley Engine Company soon began to focus on four-wheeled automobiles. Their Vee-Twin Tourer prototype, produced in 1905, can be considered the first proper Riley car. The Riley Engine Company expanded the next year. William Riley reversed his former opposition to his sons' preference for motorised vehicles and Riley Cycle halted motorcycle production in 1907 to focus on automobiles.<ref name=Motor196911/> Bicycle production also ceased in 1911.

In 1912, the Riley Cycle Company changed its name to Riley (Coventry) Limited as William Riley focused it on becoming a wire-spoked wheel supplier for the burgeoning motor industry, the detachable wheel having been invented (and patented) by Percy and distributed to over 180 motor manufacturers, and by 1912 the father's business had also dropped automobile manufacture in order to concentrate capacity and resources on the wheels. Exploitation of this new and rapidly expanding lucrative business sector made commercial sense for William Riley, but the abandonment of his motorcycle and then of his automobile business which had been the principal customer for his sons' Riley Engine Company enforced a rethink on the engine business.<ref name=Motor196911/>