OVER 200 MILES PER HOUR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3378, 13 June 1927, Page 8

OVER 200 MILES PER HOUR.

When conceivable travel at about 20 miles an hour was talked of, “Sir,” said Dr Samuel Johnson, “it would be impossible; you could not breathe,” writes Mr H. Massac Buist in the Morning Post. “One wonders if his spirit was anywhere near Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S.A., on Tuesday morning last, when Major H. O. D. Seagrave drove a British-built Sunbeam car over a measured distance of five kilometres, traversed in opposite directions, in consecutive runs, after a halt to change tyres as a measure of precaution, and attained a mean speed ten times as fast, m other words, of over 200 miles an hour. But for the ingenuity of the designer, Mr Louis Coatalen, in giving the shell of the vehicle a streamline lorm, which also affords shelter for the driver’s head, difficulty in breathing might have been experienced. The world has learned long since, however, to expect engineers to treat problems as things which exist merely to be solved by the exercise of their brains.” The most interesting fact revealed by Mr H. Massac Buist is that “engine evolution was not sought in designing the car, the performance of which is attracting world-wide attention to-day, and the production of which is misstated to have cost sums of money estimated up to as much as £20,000. “In point of fact, the most expensive parts of the car, the engines, never had to be built for this purpose, for they are anything up to ten years old, have been twice to America and have been dropped into the water once and rescued from it. The simple explanation is that they are a pair of 12cylinder, over-head-valve SunbeamCoatalen aircraft engines of one of many types standardised during the war. But, as they were no longer needed for that service, some years ago they were put into the hull of one of the' Saunders-built Maple Leaf boats that were sent to America in an endeavor to bring the British International Motor-boat Trophy back to this country. That craft was accidentally dropped into and dragged out of the water when it was being unshipped m America. Subsequently, these veteran engines were lying in store with no work to do until the world’s short-dis-tance dar-speed record approached temptingly near three miles a minute, or 180 m.p.h. Thus, as far as engines are concerned for this purpose, these have cost just the petrol, the lubricating oil, mechanics’ wages in connection with tuning up, and inconsiderable sums for adapting minor details to car, as distinct from, aircraft, installation, the question has been asked —and answered —a hundred times: What is the use of these expensive attempts to break speed records in huge, costly, and immensely specialised cars, cars so big and so fast that in this case Major Segravo had to go several -tniles to find a spot in which he could let his monster go ‘all out’ ?” says the Evening News of London. . . , r The answer, briefly, is that what Major Segrave has done was a great and adventurous thing to do, and that the willingness of man to do and admire great and adventurous things is still, and always will be, a far more valuable asset than the desire to make every footpound of effort or ambition produce its corresponding proportion of utilitarian result. In this case, however, it is possible to state the case in terms more likely to commend themselveis to the utilitarian. Major Segrave’s feat does him immense credit; but it also does immense credit to the people who built for him a huge and complicated car strong enough to withstand the tremendous strain and shock to which, loi those few hectic minutes, it was subjected. In a word. Major Segrave nob only demonstrated himself to he a peerless racing motorist. He demonstrated that British motor car construction has no equal, and he demonstrated it in a land that professes, in the matter of motor car construction, t% lead the world.”