MARGINAL COMMENTS
• By ROSE MACAULAY
GET your new car for your August holiday ! This charming exhortation 'Meets my eyes, in large, bland and glossy, print. Your car, :my adviser informs me, is old ; it makes strange noises ;. it is slow to pick np speed, gluttonous for oil and petrol, can mi1Origer climb Beggar's Roost. . . . In brief, it is,time yonehanged it This is what I have been saying myselffor„years., always say it.. I. always, shall.. The only:,. question change it for. what ? For the trouble • is that the cars of which one hears are obviously perfect. .Let us east our eyes down this list • of .vehicles new-and old. How delightful, how like stars, they•all appear ! • Wha t exquisite literature (if occasionally it trine obseur0 they each 'inspire ! • Here, for instance; is 'the 1 ten four. How roomy it is ; how it accelerates Irmo standing like an arrow from the bow, and, dashes IT steep inclines like a funicular or a .eat ! must am tempted by . the Grasshopper. A green,,p1W, should you say ? Or beige, or red ? Of course. black or navy is less noticeable, which is important. in these-days of petty regulations. Black or navy •.melts, for instance, better into the night.. But then beige, I suppose, melts better into the day. And green into the Parks, 'supposing that one should be doing a little over twenty there. Not red, I think ;' that does- not seem to Melt into any- thing. Into an • accident, you say ? Pray 'do . not let us talk .like that ; I do not .haveaeeidentS.'..
. See, here is ,a Rapide of 19.3?; cost £350,.and..offered for eighty. Yet it is exactly.like new, the :advertisement says. Super clean ; absolutely like new. . Mileage nominal. Then why, I wonder . Oh I :.see, it says why—owner giving up driving. suppose he has • had his licence 'suspended. Perhaps he is iii 'pri4on. • X wonder what the accident *as, and hOW• mtieh the Rapide was damaged. They put then't 'together 'agaii:-1 so strangely sometimes. A. friend of mine bought car whose back axle had been put, in again upside down after a smash. Outside, the Rapide sounds. charming • • • • splendid condition, red leather upholstery, sunshine roof, mute engine, de luxe seats, • super, appearanee What an agreeable car ! One wonders why its owner .so seldom used it, in two years---•why, I mean,: he 'Only' drove it a nominal number of 'miles.' No,' he deel3triot say' hove many ; the number is, nominal, like other `numbers, hut he seems to have forgotten its name. • Then here is a Daimler which cost .4Pro*tatOy £1,285 _in 1932. Approximately. One wonW;Itliiiik One would remember spending such a .stimas '1 wpr.ps:! he put it from his mind at once, not earing,to dwell on it, and has now mislaid both the bill . and hia."pass,book, Perhaps actually it did not cost: quite so naueh.
anyhow • one cannot, of course,- buy • a Daimler, • though one likes to toy with the idea. Let us turn to the-Anstins and Morrises. Their year really does not seat to Matter, 'since they are all indistinguishable frein brand new in every Way. • I wonder • how many • MileS 'Mid' years it does take to make a car are from brand new. How different they are from 'people ! _ Here is an Austin Seven De Luxe Sun Saloon,. 1931.. for £10. Now I call that cheap. Oh I see, it says "'down:" ; • there would be a little- more to•follow . . Weihnever mindi an Austin Seven is 'anyhow, quite too. small. 'Here is a Moonbeam •ten, -deposit' • £3 only ; luxury ' riding for nominal outlay; looks 190 .•.,• • • Really, it is • almost' too confusing. Since one cannot have theth all, had one 'better, perhaps, go on with thei old ear for the present ? .After all, so tong as one has not bought, a new oie, one feels. that one possesses them all ; one is not. tied cliyn4i And meanwhile car vendors make themselves so very:agreeable,
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