Continental touring with a Riley RM

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Do adventures still take place anymore, or are they a thing of the past? You know the sort of thing - find yourself an interesting and preferably fairly brisk car, throw a load of suitcases onto the roof rack, then point it at the horizon and see where the road takes you? We can't think of any better way of seeing the world, but one wonders if the spirit of adventure which inspired such great drives is still to be found, or has the cheap package holiday killed it off?

The English driver of this Riley RM certainly knew how to holiday in style. We see him in the main picture deftly easing the car round a hairpin in the Pyrenees at some point during a continental grand tour. Obviously, such a long drive would require several fuel stops, and we see him in the second picture visiting some pumps near, we believe, Palamós, a bustling port town on Spain's Costa Brava. The third picture was taken after he'd motored all the way along the Riviera to the French-Italian frontier.

It may be the least exciting of the three pictures, but 70 years later the frontier snap is perhaps the most interesting. With no unfriendly chain-link fences, coachloads of bored schoolchildren and tight-lipped, humourless border guards in shot, just a warm sun and a short queue of pretty cars, it almost makes the border crossing look like a pleasure in itself. On the subject of those other cars, it looks like we've got a pair of Peugeot 203s, a Fiat 1100 and another English party in a late 1950s Morris Oxford.

Lovely though they all are, it seems like Riley man has got the best idea. If you're going to be motoring through the Pyrenees, the Corniche d'Or and the Italian Alps, you could use a car which is roomy and comfortable and has plenty of oomph. We don't know exactly what RM it is, but we'd like to think it's the very rare RMF, with the 2½-litre engine, hydraulic brakes, improved back axle and 90mph top speed - a fine touring saloon if ever there was one. If only we could be there ourselves...

Words: Zack Stiling; pictures: Stiling Collection
 

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