COST £8.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 94, 22 April 1931, Page 7

COST £8.

« HOME-MADE CAR. TRIP FROM NEW PLYMOUTH. PRIDE OF ITS OWNERS. Without flourish of trumpets, or even the toot of horn, there pulled up at a Customs Street garage this morning a little red car, the pride of its owners, two New Plymouth lads, who can probably claim to have constructed the cheapest car ever turned out in the Dominion. The lads are brothers, R. J. and H. Burkett, and the cost of the car was a mere £8. One lad is employed in a garage at New Plymouth, and the other in a hardware store. Some months ago they conceived the idea of making a car of their own, having the engine of a motor cycle to start with. An old car, a 1924 model, ■which had been scrapped by its owner, supplied a chassis, after there had been added four sheets of galvanised iron, at 4/ a sheet. Odd bits of parts were' cut, shaped and put together, and for a steering bar a piece of Jin water pipe bent to a circle. The back taken out of an old chassis was given a bulletnose shape, while a few small boards of timber ■were planed down to supply the framework. A two-gallon benzine tin is used as a tank, and the tyres ■ are from motor cycles. "We can do up to 60 miles in her," said one of the lads this morning, Avhile giving the car an overhaul after her splendid run from New Plymouth. "Except for a bad stretch of road and floods near Te Kuiti, we had no trouble at all, and the only thing that went wrong was the loss of a nut attached to the springs." The lads are on holidays and are intent upon getting a lot of enjoyment out of their car. Men in the trade who saw the car this morning speak highly of the "job," and the boys have been freely congratulated upon their work