MOTORING
The Real Winter Danger The December blizzard, inexpressibly detestable as it was, served one useful purpose in reminding us how very rash we usually are in neglecting the most obvious precaution in a British winter, the keeping of non-skids in our cars at all times. It is of course true that weather like that we endured at Christmas is rare enough. Roads frozen for more than a day or so only happen to us once in a long while, and if it snows really hard it is usually followed very soon by the saving thaw. None the less our memory is criminally short, or else we are wilfully stupid to go about our winter motoring in th2 haphazard way we do. While the blizzard was on I heard story after story of all stocks of non-skid gaiters and chains being sold out in the first 24 hours, and the supplies of anti-freezing mixtures failing by thousands of gallons to meet the demand. The latter was an expensive mischance for those who, like doctors, have to leave their cars exposed for long periods, but the lack of chains was, from everybody else's point of view, far more serious.
Compulsory Chains This weather fell on us with the suddenness of a tropical hurricane, actually, in one hilly district where I was caught, between sunset and sunrise—and there is no reason why it should not do it again. That is how we have our weather in dies! islands. The result was that thousands of us were surprised without chains or non-skids and at once became a very serious danger not only to ourselves but to road naviga- tion in general. That there were not more accidents was just luck. You have no control worth mentioning over a car on ice, and when it skids it travels as if falling through the air. Whatever stops its effortless progress is hit with incalculable weight and force. If as a result it could be made compulsory to carry some form of non-skid as it is to have a mirror, a tail-light and safety glass, that unspeakable week would have been worth living through.
"The Monte Carlo" On Tuesday next 129 cars, carrying about 25o passengers, will start on that magnificent exhibition of insanity the Monte Carlo Rally, eighteenth of the series. A continent distraught by internal anxieties and the unending fear of bankruptcy and war might not seem the best place for a jaunt of this kind, but to these international optimists of 14 nations nothing matters in the world but those eight 2,00o-mile stages of wintry roads that lie between Monte Carlo and the Aegean, the North Atlantic and the Baltic— as tough a choice of four-day drives as the coldest-hearted committee could conceive. British entries head the lists with 41 (four more than last year), 24 from John o' Groats, eight from Athens, five from Stavanger, two each from Tallinn and Amsterdam, and one from Palermo.
The British cars are Lagonda, Morris, S.S., Railton, Humber, Lea-Francis, Daimler, Wolseley, Alvis, Ford, Talbot, Hillman, Standard, Vauxhall and Triumph. The Tallinn entries include a nationality new to mi—a Yugo- Pole. Appropriately enough he is driving a car that is made in at least five different countries.
A New Armstrong-Siddeley I was pleasantly impressed with my trial of the latest model of the Armstrong-Siddeley range, the new 16-h.p. coach saloon, which sells at L380. It marks so great an improvement on the t7-h.p. which preceded it, indeed upon any of this make I have driven in the past ten years, that one may be forgiven for saying that it is a new sort of Armstrong-Siddeley altogether. The only obvious mechan- ical difference is in the engine-measurement, which is now 65 by too, giving it cubic content of just under two litres, everything else, except perhaps in detail of construction, being the same—" balanced drive," self-selecting gear-box (which is slightly higher geared for a reason that will appear) and the rest. Weight-Reduction Gain The main difference, however, is of supreme importance. It weighs 27-cwt. as against the 3o cwt. of last year's Car, an extremely useful shedding of a lump of deadweight. I felt pretty sure, from the feel and behaviour of it, that the new and smaller engine was a good deal more efficient than the old one, but that alone was not enough to account for the great difference in performance. Weight-reduction once more proved its inestimable value.
This is a very comfortable, well-designed car with plenty of room for five people, very well upholstered and finished, with as much light admitted through the windows as I have ever seen in any car. Visibility excellent, so to speak, particularly for the driver, who not only has a wide view of the road on either side but, rarer these days, of his wings too.
The Best of Them Yet The gears, are as -quiet as any I have known in boxes of this type and there is no idling hum at all. The automatic clutch gives smooth engagement and the necessary travel of the pedal seemed to me no longer than in a normai, type. With a maximum speed of just over 7o on top and 5o on third, the car will cruise at 6o without effort and almost without sound. It climbs steep hills fast and powerfully on both third and second, its acceleration is excellent, and the main impression it gives you is of unobtrusive power and speed. I should say that it was easily the best Armstrong- Siddeley yet made.
On Kerry Hill It is the last spur of the range covered by Clun Forest and makes a kind of frontier outpost between Shropshire, Radnorshire and Montgomery, and it is one of the most solitary places imaginable. There is only one good road to it from either north or south, and when you begin to climb up to it the hills lie out on either side of you with never another made road for seven or eight miles east or west. Farm lanes and sheep tracks wind about in the forest—it is the sort of early English forest which has very few trees—but you only notice them as you pass. To all intents and purposes you are on the only road in the world.
A Ten-mile Hill The approach is admirably arranged. You start from Clun, which is a few miles west of Ludlow, and begin to climb a hill which does not stop being a hill for something like ten miles. Is that a record for these islands ? I think it must be, though there are, most mercifully, so many out-of-the-way by-roads in Wales and on the border known only to those who live there that it is possible you can go on climbing for more than ten miles. But it has a distinct Alpine touch, that long stretch of collar-work. The road follows the stream Clun practically to its source, which is somewhere on the east flank of Kerry Hill itself, and at first it runs through some pleasant woods, the trees pressing close about you and nobody much about except birds and rabbits. Then you come out into the open on the edge of one of the countless Black Mountains, pass the solitary ' Anchor Inn' and reach the top of the hill, about i,5oo feet above the sea.
Below you lies the valley of the Severn, with Newtown in the foreground, beyond, across the gulf, various Welsh heights, including Plinlimmon, though you would have to be lucky to see that on a winter's day. ' You are not over- topped by anything else, and for once in a way you are, you feel, really on the highest point visible. It is a most unusual sensation anywhere, quite extraordinary in Wales. Kerry [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.]
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