Auto Gossip

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33094, 8 December 1972, Page 16

Auto Gossip

by

A.J.P.

Angry rodents There are some things in cars — brakes and seatbelts could be two examples — which you do not need to use to their fullest very often, but when you need them, you really need them badly. The horn falls in the same category: when you want it to be heard, you want it heard loud and clear. And there is not much chance of that if you have a car built in the last three or four years. One overseas writer has described the average modern car-horn as having much the same volume and effect on the listeners as the sound of a really angry field-mouse. In practical terms, the description is not far from the truth. Warning needed An asthmatic squeak sounds bad enough coming from something the size of a Fiat 500, but coming from a large, fast car it is downright ridiculous. A typical occasion when you may need the horn badly is when you are about to overtake on the open road — and suddenly the fellow you are passing starts to pull over on top of you, and overtake the fellow in front of him. With the horns fitted to many of today’s cars you can toot until you’re blue in the face —- or off the road and through the hedge — with almost no likelihood of the steel-encapsu-lated, radio-listening fellow ahead of you ever hearing the warning.- Another case is on one of those West Coast-type roads with

narrow, blind bends, around which a truck may thunder at any moment. You want to give ample “audible warning of your approach,” as the Road' Code would say. With a modem’ hooter? Not a chance. Unbelievable You can, of course, i throw away the cheap and i nasty gadgets which the manufacturer has fitted, I and equip your vehicle I with a set of good, strident air-horns — if you are prepared to spend the $2O to | $3O. I have heard there can be problems even then, with some cars? One man who equipped his very small car so, I hear, found that wandering pedestrians and cyclists, hearing the horn, would immediately start looking for the sort of vehicle they would I expect to sound so commanding: a 10-tonner, or a sleek, fast, Italian-styled; sports car. Seeing only a| slightly ancient and very; small family saloon, they would refuse to believe their senses and make their dangerous move anyway. . . .