MOTOR JOTTINGS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18217, 3 October 1919, Page 5

MOTOR JOTTINGS.

EXIT—THE CHEAP CAR. There is no longer room in the industry for the car built solely to sell, says "Automotive Industries" in an editorial. The cheap car, the big car for the money, the product that hurt us abroad as much as it did at home, has no longer a place in the field. Mushroom concerns that spring up overnight, and go to seed after * brief period of misrepresentation, are a tiling of the past. The changed conditions brought about by the war make it impossible for a concern to succeed even for a short time with this policy. In future, greater value must be given, and a concern to be a success must build with the idea of permanency. Wo have come to the realisation that it is better to add a few dollars to tho selling price and to put that added value into materials and workmanship. Specification shaving is not tho method of acquiring success. It is one of the most encouraging phases that we have ever encountered. It is gratifying to study the specifications and tho quality of the material that is coming out in tho 1920, the post-war cars. Alloy steel of the best quality, dimensions that mean value, are the rule and not the exception. The best in upholstery, enlarged crankshafts, tolerances k paralleling those of airplane manufacture, and other indications of the practice of building as well as possible are characteristic of most of the new products. BRITAIN TO DISPOSE OF MOTORCYCLES. A special concession has been granted by tho Britisn Government to the War Motors Association by which ex-motor-cycle dispatch riders who liavo served as such in any branch of tho services, are to be given first refusal of a large number of surplus Government motor-cycles. The only condition attached to the offer is that the motorcycles shall not be resold within six months. The following: machines are available immediately:—Several hundred new Douglas motor-cycles, wi crates, at from £6O to £7O; a large number of repaired Douglas muwr. cycles, £4O to £SO; and a quantity of repairable machines, at various prices. DEFECTIVE CYLINDER CASTINGS. Complaint is rife all round, but more especially among firms who buy their cylinder castings, says the English correspondent of an American trade journal, of the marked inferiority since the war of cylinder castings. As high as 60 per cent of wasters and discards are reported in some cases, and one firm has found it advisable to triplicate its orders for cylinders for a given batch of output. Before the war, Belgian and French cylinder castings were supplied in .Britain in large quantities at less tuaii £2 for a small four-cylinder block. Probably 'the present price of a sunilar casting thanks to the suppression of imported castings, is double, so that besides the factor of an increase of 100 per cent for the casting, there is a pro rata increased cost of machining besides, and a 2 or 3 to 1 chance of wasters and, as usually happens, waster castings only reveal themselves during machining, so that the initial cost is considerably increased by machineshop and overhead charges. As all the cost ultimately is borne by the public, an item of this sort may easily be a perpetual handicap to tho expansion of business in British cars, and such a handicap is felt moat in the overseas market, where the British product has to meet American and other makes. I have not heard what is the cause of these unsatisfactory castings, but incline to the view that there is a shortago of the necessary hematite oro for this class of casting.