MOTOR-CAR RUNS AMOK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17979, 3 January 1922, Page 4

MOTOR-CAR RUNS AMOK.

A MIDNIGHT SENSATION, DAMAGE IN PRINCES STREET. Shortly after the chimes at midnight on Saturday had announced tho end of tho old year and tho birth of the new, habitues of the Grand Hotel and its vicinity who were celebrating tho advent of 1922 were startled by a loud crash as of the rending of timbers. The kerb outside tho hotel was lined with motor-cars, and one or two owners hastily went out to assure themselves that their machines were as tbey had left them. One car, however, which had been standing across the street, was missing. Searchers were able to locate it, some few minutes later, lying halfway across tho pathway in Emily Place reserve, below the Shortland Street embankment. No explanation is yet forthcoming as to how the machino started 011 its downhill career, but there is ample evidence that it crossed Princes Street at an angle, mounted the footpath, and collided heavily with the old building on the corner of Shortland and Princes Streets, used as a Chinese laundry. The car, a large cue, owned by Mr. Archibald Falls, of Hastr ings, by this time must have gathered considerable momentum, for after 6ma-shing the Chinaman's window and damaging his doorway, it continued across the footpath, taking a verandah post and impairing the symmetry of perhaps the 0 dest verandah in New Zealand. Thence the car travelled across the street and through the picket fence on the Shortland Street frontage of Emily Place. Here a drop of 10ft. or 12ft. occurs, and the car, taking a plunge into mid-air, brought up against a young pohutukawa treo and dropped to tho path below, completely shattering a garden seat in its fall. Owing to the deserted state of the streets and reserve at that late hour, the car had a e'ear run. It was removed to a garage on Sunday morning, *ben it was discovered that the only damage it had sustained consisted of a broken radiator and wind shield, and buckled mudguards, while the hood was more or less ruined. Tho engine and general structure escaped serious injury.