Auto Gossip

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31018, 25 March 1966, Page 11

Auto Gossip

Entangled People seem to get into some extraordinary predicaments when driving cars, becoming enmeshed in the interior fittings in the most unlikely ways. There was the friend driving my car along the main road one evening who managed to get one finger jammed in one of the holes drilled in the spokes of the wood-rimmed wheel. Fortunately this occurred on a straight section of road. 1 hate to think what might have happened if a sharp corner had been coming up. It might have been a case of lose a finger and save the ship! Also Snared Another friend, a pipe smoker was trapped in another way. As he turned his head to reverse into a parking spot, somehow he got his pipe entangled with the diagonal strap of his seat belt, and struggled for a few moments with clenched teeth and bulging eyes. Not Funny

But some of these mishaps are not so funny. Like the fellow who caught the flash-ing-indicator stalk in his coatsleeve and very nearly ran off the road, and the similar cases that have occurred with those wretched steeringwheel spinners. There have been cases of drivers catching a foot under the clutch pedal at a critical moment. All slightly reminiscent of the chap alleged to have jumped in his sports car during a

A.J.P.

by

Le Mans start only to have the gear-lever go up his trouser-leg! Now and Then One of the worst types of rain to drive in is that light drizzle that is just enough to make vision difficult but not really enough to justify the continuous use of wipers. One can either put up with the wiper blades dragging noisly across near-dry glass, or switch them on for one sweep every minute or so. A United States car maker has come up with a sound idea to beat this problem. When a switch is operated the wipers give one sweep only every 20 seconds or so, the interval being arranged by adjusting a knob. Fatuous Suggestions that halved registration fees for veteran cars would lead to more old cars on the road and might result in the year when cars become veteran being advanced are fatuous in the extreme. Veteran cars in no way enter into the problem of old cars on New Zealand roads, and nearly all are in better condition than most ordinary cars only 10 years oldAs far as the “age limit” is concerned, the veteran car clubs of the world and their ruling bodies have long resisted far greater pressures on the age limit than a minor licence fee reduction in one small country. Whether the proposed reduction has any merit on other grounds is doubtful, but the reasons advanced to oppose it show a remarkable lack of understanding and thought.

Quote of the Week “What other car would entice a policeman on point duty to leave his post at a busy moment, stroll over and say: •Are you in the right country, sir—or even in the right world?’ or the driver of a lorry halted at a traffic signal to leap from his cab to come and ask about it?” —from an “Autocar” road test of the Oldsmobile Toronado.