How very rare is a new thing in motor-cars, a
new idea, a new application of an old one, a new method of con- struction. Year after year novelties and innovations are announced and, after the correct amount of what is sometimes. in America, called ballyhoo (a corruption of that excellent English word hullaballoo ? Singularly apt), they are produced and incorporated, at least for a while, in the new cars. Would you say that these were the same as new things ? Is it splitting hairs to hold the view that they are only new clothes, as it were, and that they seldom alter the essential characteristics of the bones of the car underneath ? And if it is hair-splitting, as it may well be in the eyes of the Athenians, what, exactly, are those really new things that have changed our motor- ing in any memorable degree ?
They are not many, if you count only those that have survived the test of time and public taste,.to say nothing of finance. Starting from the day when Mercedes brought out the first proper gear-box, and all the world began to imitate it, how many original inventions have gone to the making of the modern car ? I should say that the prime difference between the average 1905 and the average 1935 chassis is the four-wheel brake system. All sorts of new things have been tried in those thirty years, from overhead valves to superchargers, from freewheels and pre-selective gear-boxes to down-draught carburet- tors and front-wheel drive. Of all those things that make for safety or efficiency only the four-wheel brake survives in every modern car. Overhead valves were introduced with a special allowance of ballyhoo. They were said to increase engine-power to such an extent that side-valves were doomed. In the last five years there has been practically no increase in the number of overhead valved engines, while at least one famous British make, the Humber, has gone back to the old type after years of success with the new.
The sleeve-valved engine burst upon us at a lucky moment, when the general owner was beginning to tire of noise and frequent valve-grinding. For several years it rivalled the most expensive of the normal types in quietness and reliability. Its chief users in this country were Daimler, in _France Mors, Voisin and Panhard, in Belgium Minerva and, for a short time, in Germany Mercedes., Today there is not one sleeve-valved engine in regular production in Great Britain (I do not count the State cars which are a special order), and elsewhere the only survivals are Minerva, Panhard and Voisin. Can that be counted as a new thing that mattered ? In Italy Ceirano, or it may have been his successor in the Ras works, brought out, a few years before the War, an engine with rotary valves—obviously of impeccable design. How could a rotary valve fail to work with perfect regu- larity ? How could the other adaptation of the same theory, the Darracq " barrel-valve,' be anything but a complete solution of all gas-feeding problems ? The life of both systems Was painfully- short an& both cars returned to the mushroom valve that was born in Gottlieb Daimler's first automobile some quarter of a century before. Another new thing discarded.
In the beginning, or rather, after 1902 or so, all cars had electric ignition, most of them using coil and battery, with a highly temperamental arrangement of tremblers on the coil that had to be adjusted at frequent intervals, a few being fitted with low-tension magnetos which gave a spark. that was probably far fatter than anything we get to-day from the latest types of ignition. Then came the high-tension magneto, obviating the use of a make- and-break in each cylinder .and_ substituting the ordinary sparking plug, and that had a very long innings before the next new thing arrived. This was a return to coil- and-battery ignition, but of a simpler design, without tremblers. Today there are signs that the high-tension magneto will become popular once more. The new ignition that is so much better than any other that the lack of it handicaps the best of cars has not yet been invented. We get along pretty well with improved editions of systems that have been in use for 80 years.
The Wilson pre-selective gear-box arrived and was in time adopted by various British manufacturers in this country, in alphabetical order, Alvis, Armstrong- Siddeley, B.S.A., Crossley, Daimler, Lagonda, Lanchester, Riley, Talbot and Wolseley, ten out of some thirty-eight in all. That was certainly a very new thing,_ in many respects a very clever thing. It abolished, at a stroke, all clumsy, noisy and delayed gear-changing and made it easy for the bad' and insensitive driver to mend his ways. Yet you cannot say that it has had any marked effect on the general design of cars. In England ii.one there are still 28 makers, including those who build the dearest and the cheapest cars, who stick to the normal gear-box. The free-wheel is more generally used, but it is hardly a new thing of the sort that revolutionizes anything else. The box that descends direct from the 30-year-old Mercedes is still the box used in the majority of cars, with or without the free-wheel. Our latest cars, taken as a whole and not individually, have no new principle in the design of engine or transmission. Most things have been vastly improved and many ingenious gadgets have been evolved for the comfort and amusement of owners, but the bare car remains essentially the same—except that it has four-wheel brakes.
There is, none the less, one new thing to be seen today, in one car only, and that is the springless suspension of the new 12-h.p. Citroen. I believe, as a matter of fact, that even this is not new in principle, only new in applica- tion, but at all events I think I am right in saying that no motor-car has ever been fitted with it before. Pro- phesying about motor design is far too chancy a business for the cautious observer, but I will go so far as to say that, provided the patent-owners make the necessary con- cessions, this new thing stands as good a chance as any of -its rare predecessors of becoming accepted practice. It struck me, when I drove the car, as exceptionally successful. There are no road-springs, the inequalities and shocks of travel being absorbed by a system of torsion-rods which act rather like the best kind of shock-.
absorbers. The car drifts along in a way that comes nearer to that over-quoted quality of " floating " than anything I have yet known. At moderate speeds you get the impression that it is just a very well-sprung car. So soon 'as you get beyond forty miles an hour you realize that this is a new experience. There is a curious feeling about the car's progress, as if it were actually floating, although- that is a misleading simile. A boat moves as the waves affect it, whereas the bodywork of the Citroen seems to, remain steady no matter what agitations are being endured by its wheels.
It is claimed for this system that it is superior to the normal spring suspension in that the flexibility is con- stant, that of the other being necessarily variable, and that, for equal flexibility, the torsion-rod weighs half as much as the spring and is twice as strong. It is also stated that it requires no attention, whatever. Needless to say, I have had no opportunity of verifying any of these claims, but they are made in all seriousness and may, therefore, be so taken. If there is ballyhoo, I have not discovered it. The four wheels are independently " sprung " and the car is consequently not moved out of its plane by any but the largest obstacles. The torsion- rod does what it is supposed to do.
The engine of the Citroen is an overhead valved unit of normal design, the latest example having a slightly larger cubic capacity than the original. The drive is on the front axles and the gear-lever is brought through the dash. Front-wheel drive is old and there is nothing special to be said about this example except, perhaps, that the steering is not thereby rendered as heavy as usual. It gives you the liveliest cornering—the car seems to curve itself as it takes a sharp bend—and the saving of power is very evident. A point that struck -me forcibly was the comparative quietness of engine and gear- box. Usually the front-axle position makes for a good deal of noise. There is a surprising amount of body-space available and the one-piece saloon is really.roomy.- There is no frame in the ordinary way, the body forming the supports for the engine and suspension. It is a lively, well-mannered light car, decidedly interesting at the
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