Auto Gossip

Press, 18 June 1976, Page 17

Auto Gossip

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Russell Jones)

Many motorists regard road tests in magazines and newspapers as a great help when deciding what car to buy. but perhaps just as many regard them as worse than useless. Unless the road tester has the opportunity to drive the car for thousands of miles under all types of conditions he’s unlikely to be able to present more than a superficial appraisal of it under test.

In most cases, the road tester is well aware of this limitation and will say so. and of course the reader can study the test at his leisure and compare it directly with other tests. But television is a different story. I’ve not had the opportunitv to see more than the fast few of the recent series of TVl’s “Motor Show” but the ones I did see interested me— along with a great many other people, according to the ratings. Murray Thompson has the sort of down-to-earth approach which New Zealand motorists appreciate, and in a few minutes crams in a lot of information about a car — backed up by invaluable pictures. But although he obviously tries hard to be fair, the programme is still Murray Thompson’s opinion of various cars, and from what I’ve heard many people accept his

word as the final judgment.

I heard of a chap who sold his 1968 Escort on a Saturday with one proviso — that the buyer make his final decision on the Monday night, when the ‘‘Motor Show” was assessing the new Escort. Murray Thompson didn’t say anything too damning about the car, so the deal went through, but I think this illustrates the dangerously powerful position Mr Thompson may have won for himself. If they make a new series of the programme I would like to see more shots of the cars cornering at Manfield. And I wish they would drop the so-called brake test. A car stops most efficiently when the brakes are applied so that the wheels are just on the point of locking, and a good driver would not brake so hard that the wheels locked up and the car slewed sideways. I know it is good television to see rubber smoke pouring from the tyres, but it would make better sense to do a series of carefully controlled braking tests and then give the final result.