Drove 35 Miles —Backwards

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30740, 3 May 1965, Page 15

Drove 35 Miles —Backwards

(New Zealand Press Association)

NAPIER, May 2.

A 32-year-old English musician. Mr Brian Biddis, completed a fantastic driving feat early yesterday morning when he drove the 35 miles from Tarawera to Westshore backwards. He was faced with the ordeal when the automatic transmission on his late model English car developed a fault and he found it would only travel in reverse.

Taking great care, he slowly negotiated the hairpin bends and tortuous climbs of the Napier-Taupo highway in just more than five hours. Mr Biddis is a flautist in the New Zealand Opera Company’s orchestra, accompanying “Porgy and Bess” in Hawke’s Bay this week. He was faced with the driving dilemma at 2.15 a.m. while he was driving from Napier to Taupo to fish on his day off. “I was just climbing a slight hill when suddenly the car refused to drive forward. There were plenty of revs, but no forward drive,” he said. “I couldn’t fix it. Time was precious to me because we

move on to New Plymouth on Sunday. If I had stayed on the road overnight it would have been a day wasted in getting the car fixed.” “So I decided to back to the nearest settlement. Mr Biddis said he had good rear vision through a wide rear window. Whenever he saw a vehicle approaching, he stopped and walked up the road with a red lamp. He stopped several times for traffic and to add water to the overheated engine.

“It is something I never want to do again,” he said.