The Inside Story of Bob Lutz's 1935 Riley MPH Car

Last week at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance I happened to speak with one Willem Van Huystee, the 79-year-old Dutch owner of a 1935 Riley MPH roadster.

The little 6-cylinder car is notable not only for its extreme rarity (it was produced in Coventry, England, for only two years) but also because it was owned for 50 years by Bub Lutz, the former chairman of General Motors  famously and infamously known for his garrulous personality and fighter-pilot credentials. Probably every automotive journalist who has interviewed Lutz even once has an off-color story or two about this endearingly gruff and off-the-cuff man.

Apparently he had a thing for British cars.

"He saw that car when he was 16 and coveted it for years," Van Huystee told me.

But Van Huystee has quite a personality himself, as you'll see in the video above. And it's ironic that this 17-horsepower roadster has gone from one character to another. Rough life.

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