Motoring The British Car Abroad - IN a large batch
of letters from Spectator readers, written from places as far apart as Hong Kong, Croydon, India, West Africa, New Zealand and Yorkshire, are several requests for advice and information that in themselves give the reader interesting light on motor- ing as it is done the other side of the world compared with our problems at home, and show the latter up for the trivialities they are. What strikes me as particularly interesting is the fact that those who ask me to recommend cars for what stay-at-homes might still be tempted to call pioneer stuff, all demand British machines, and that those who have interesting stories to tell of road adventures that can only be described as purple, seem to have accomplished their most difficult journeys, whether routine or in search of some new thing in many new places, in ears built in England. Against these—it is only "a coincidence —is the letter of a man living in the Far East who asks me to choose an American car for him to drive when he comes home for good. It reads oddly among the others. There are several excellent American cars sold over here and at least two of the best known are as long-lived -as any European car costing the same or more, but apart from their comparatively low price (just now) in relation to their size and power I cannot see that they have any outstanding "pull" over the home-produced car.
The first letter I opened came from a reader who wants a £200 car for West Africa. Let me quote him—"After a tour of 18 .months' reasonably heavy work, often with considerable loads, on all conditions of roads, I may want the car to be able to make a trans-Continental journey from Lagos in Nigeria, either across to East Africa or to the Mediterranean." Now I think it would be no reflection upon any make of car of any nationality to decide that this is an unreasonable request. I can think of two or three £600 and £700 cars of British and Continental manufacture that I would choose myself for such a job, and, of course, at least as many costing £1,000 and over, but a two hundred pounder ! It seemed fantastic. Yet, even as I searched files and records of specially successful performances, another reader brought me the answer. He told of a car that cost just under £200 which had, when far from new, been disembarked at Casablanca in Morocco and driven across the Sahara in zig-zag fashion, to Timbuctoo, to the big bend of the Niger, across to the Nile at El Obeid, eastwards to an indeterminate point, to the White Nile and the Blue, to Khartum and down river, by Abu Hammed and Wadi Halfa to the First Cataract and Alexandria.
Here they took ship for the Piraeus and finished what . _ must be very nearly a record run in the circumstances by taking the infamous road through the Balkans home. Many hundieds of miles of this remarkable tour are, of course, perfectly easy for any good car. Navigable tracks abound in all sorts of unexpected places and in various parts of the world, picturesquely wild, your only serious risk is the weather or the wrong season of - the year. But even so it is. not everyone who would light-heartedly start with a 1200 car to explore the Sahara or the southern end of the Sudan. The owner remarked that the worst part was that between Athens, Sofia and Belgrade—but it may be that by that time he was a little weary or that he expected the capitals of Europe to be connected by modern roads. That £200 car was—is, I should say—British. I Would, in any, case; have advised my West African to buy a British machine; but it would never have occurred to me to agree that £200 or twice that amount would be a 'fair price .to pay for a car with such a life before it, whatever its nation- ality. - Generally speaking, there is no decent British car you cannot fake anywhere in the world where cars can go and get less satisfaction out of it than you would out of an American of the same price. There is one familiar drawback, of course, to which our attention has been regularly drawn for a. quarter of a century, and that is the deplorable lack of after-sale service given by some British firms to oversea customers. Yet if that £200 car came through her astonishing journey without crippling failure it looks as if a sound British car could dispense with a chain of service-stations throughout the Empire. I cannot imagine man,r such stations anywhere in French Africa or between Stamboul and Budapest. Oddly enough another correspondent complains of a very old trouble in her British ear abroad, overheating, pregumably in the mountains. That was certainly a far too common fault until a very. few years ago, but although I did come across One or two of our own cars (new models) in the Alps this summer, showing all too plainly the signs of defective cooling, I believe it is comfortably rare now- adays. None the less it is a point to be verified before all others when picking out a " hard-life " car for Con- tinental or tropical work. An engine that boils its water in any but the most exceptional circumstances is an unmitigated nuisance. Far better have one that is Over- cooled (as moSt Italians are) than under-cooled. It is easy to keep an engine warm, impossible to keep it cold.
Four Spectator readers who either live in hot climates or who propose taking cars there have emphasized the rather difficult question of re-boring, more particularly with reference to my last article, in which I described the compression-preserving qualities of eolloidal -graphite in the sump. All four own cars of well-known rrkakes, .cost- ing between £400 and £600, and all four have been obliged to have the cylinders re-bored every 80,000 miles. They want to know whether the cylinders are -likely to wear faster in temperatures constantly nearer 100 degrees than CO degrees and whether graphite will delay wear. I am afraid I cannot answer that question. Meticulous and prolonged comparative tests alone can do that—and even then there is always the difficulty of the particular quali- ties of tested engines. No two -of the same make and Size are ever exactly alike. I am familiar with three engines of the same make, one 110,000 miles old, the second 72,000 miles old and the third 52,000 miles old. The first and the third have never been re-bored,, the second once. All three havebeen properly looked after and in other respects there is nothing to choose between them. Only_ the youngest has used graphite and that- for a few thousand miles only.
Here are some of the recommendations I am making to The Spectator readers. For arduous work in- the Domi- nions, particularly in the tropics and where the going is rough and efficient help scarce : the 14-h.p. Vauxhall, the 12-h.p. (heavy) 4-cylinder Austin, the 25-h.p. Rolls- Royce, the 10-h.p. Triumph and the new 20-h.p. Vauxhall. For Great Britain and the Continent : the B.S.A:, the 12-h.p. Citron, the 20-h.p. Sunbeam, the 12-6 Riley and the 15-h.p. Daimler. I must take this opportunity of apologizing for -a considerable delay in replying individu- ally to readers' letters, due to my being away. - JOHNT PRIOLEALI.
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