MOTORING
A Sign of Better Tithes During the past fifteen months or so I have had more letters from Spectator readers asking for information about various sorts of cars than ever before in twice the period. Advice has been asked about cars of all prices and powers, from such comfortable examples as the biggest Rolls-Royce —comfortable, I mean, because I should not have thought a decision in the over £2,500 class a matter for much heart- searching—to the smallest of the babies, the Morris, the Austin and the pocket Fiat. That, in the long months of that depression which it was the fashion to regard as a sort of perverted boom, struck me as a very good sign of normal money-spending.
News From the Dominions Another interesting point about these letters was the high proportion that were written from overseas. A few came from France and Italy, but with the prevailing duties it must be assumed that the writers were of that rare and fortunate class which does not mind what it spends. The rest, not home inquiries, came from the other side of every one of the seven seas, from Australia, India, Ceylon, all the African dominions including the Transvaal, Egypt, the Malay States, Borneo and, most astonishingly, Canada. Canada, with one from Hungary, provided the chief surprise. All these readers displayed, with singular unanimity, a desire to do what they could for the home industry.
Their letters have been extremely interesting, giving me all the arguments for and against the buying of British cars in countries where the Americans have so long estab- lished themselves and, with scarcely an exception, have shown why our own products are, in themselves, at least as satisfactory as our rivals'. As you might expect, the only cogent argument against the British car in general (apart from the higher price) is the absence of the kind of service provided by the Americans. An old story but not the less depressing for that. Shall we ever oust the foreigner from our own particular markets ? Does any British manu- facturer mean to try ?
A Year's Car-testing In the past year or so I have tested for The Spectator between thirty and forty models of different kinds, and I have written my personal impressions of about two dozen of them up to now. Several readers have asked me, at intervals, for the dates on which these reports appeared and for convenience sake I append the list. 1937: io Talbot, November isoth ; Bentley, December 3rd ; 16 Rover and 14 Triumph, December 31st. 1938: 12 Wolseley, January i4th ; V-I2 Lagonda, January 28th; io Vauxhall, February ix th ; 25 Morris, Jensen, March 25th; 14 Stan- dard, April 8th ; is Opel, April 22nd; 28 Humber, May 20th; 14 Armstrong-Siddeley, June 3rd ; 14 Morris, June i7th ; 25 Wolseley, August 5th ; 25 Vauxhall, August 12th; 12 Alvis, August 25th; io Hillman, September 9th ; 28 Olds- mobile, September 23rd; 12 Vauxhall, November 11th; 18 Wolseley, November ath ; 28 Austin, December 2nd ; io Morris, December i6th.
The test-run includes nothing that the ordinary driver does not encounter in normal circumstances in any part of the world where roads are made. I take the cars up one very steep hill, under the most difficult conditions I can devise, in order to check flexibility and uphill acceleration (if any) ; over a section of the worst surface I can find on any road used by the public ; and along a couple of still mercifully deserted bypasses where it is generally easy to find out just how fast they will go, and how well or badly they hold the road. It is a route I would choose before any other if I were going to decide between one car and another—and it is in that purely personal frame of mind that I try these cars. I find out if I want them for myself. Darkness by Night We are accustomed by now to consider most of the dangers of the road in terms of bad driving, ineffectual limits, speed, out-of-date road design, Ministerial complacency and Ow like, but there remains one, in two sections, which so far as I am concerned is the worst of all. Driving at night, once a special delight for the enthusiast, is today nothing less than a nightmare horror except in those swiftly shrinking places where you can be away from suburbs for as much as an hour at a time. If it is clear weather, you are dazzled almost to the point of blindness (as you were many years ago) ; if there is a fog, your case is so desperate, in this year 1939, that you might in actual fact be blind. Many modern cars have dipping and or dimming systems, some have special " non-dazzling " lights, called pass-lights ; some, but I am seldom lucky enough to meet them, lights that do not dazzle the oncoming driver until it does not matter ; not one that I know of has a light that makes it easier to drive in fog.
A New Type of Fog-Lights I believe I have tried every design of non-dazzling, fog- piercing light made since the War. I have still a pair of seven-year old " safety " lights which throw a wide beam and let me drive as fast as 40 miles an hour without risk and without dazzling other people, but they do not pierce fog. I have now been asked by the makers of the Trippe " Safe- light " Matched Pairs to try a set on my own car, and I accept with hope. One day we shall get a beam that goes through fog for the short distance necessary. I propose to describe my experiences with the Trippes when I have been caught out in a fog. (Interesting as it may be, I am not looking forward to it.) L. Nageltia That is what it is called on the map, that insignificant piece of blue water at the foot of the Partry Mountains in Connemara, but I only use it as an approximate signpost. There is another very like it a quarter of a mile away and a third on the other side of the road, and they all rank as loughs, ponds though they are. Their function is to provide the background and the relief for one of Ireland's most peaceful corners. It is nothing but turf, Irish peat, of the deepest jet-black where it is cut and of a strange purple brown on the top. Miles and miles of it, scenting every wandering puff of wind, rolling out to the horizon. The road crawls ; through it, a yellow and grey ribbon, where the sands breaks out irrepressibly over the macadam, and every mile seems like five, so swiftly does the look of the moor change, the colours melt and mix.
Donkeys and a Pyramid Away from the blacks and browns the dominating colour is that blue that exists only on the Irish mountains and Irish water, the blue that remains blue in pouring rain, in every weather but mist, and on a sunny day puts the Mediter- ranean sky out of competition. Facing north on the horizon towards Westport you see Croagh Patrick, a pyramid, perfect example of that singularly uninspired school of architecture. For a mile or two it keeps its incredible outline and then, as if repenting of an ill-timed jest, becomes an ordinary Irish hill again. That apparition may take your eye off the black and blue and brown, as may the voices of the turf-cutters and their donkeys, trailing across the skyline for all the world like a caravan : but nothing else. This is a place of that beauty which lives in purity of line and colour. It is a place to go to, not to drive through.
JOHN PRIOLEAU.
[Note.—Readers' requests for advice from our Motoring Correspondent on the choice of new cars should be accompanied by a stamped and addressed envelope. The highest price payable must be given, as well as the type of body required. No advice can be given on the purchase, sale or exchange of used cars.1
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