WHAT IS YOUR IDEAL CAR?

NZ Truth, Issue 1062, 1 April 1926, Page 16

WHAT IS YOUR IDEAL CAR?

Combination of Popular Features BIG PROBLEM FOR MANUFACTURERS We recently referred to the ideal, which is upheld by so many motorists, of a car which will contain the good points and omit the weaknesses of all the cars which are at present on the market.

Vi/E also mentioned that we thought vv this "one-horse shay" to be imr possible of attainment for; many reasons. It is a fact that when the designers of (several satisfactory cars or engines have been gathered' together for the purpose of designing- something containing the best ideas of each, the result has always been worse than' any of their individual efforts; . Any ex-Royal Air Force reader will remember, cases very muchjto the point m - this connection. A READER'S IDEA Now a reacler sends us another suggestion for reaching the ideal. " Why not take the most popular features and combine them? By this he means that if, for instance, the majority of cars are fitted with four-cylinder engines, he will have a four-cylinder engine m hijj car; if nearly every car has a tubular drive shaft, that is the kind of drive shaft he will use, and so on. There is one feature of progress m designing , however, which our reader has overlooked when thinking but his scheme. . '

"Where the vanguard rests to- V .day, the rear shall camp- to-mor- "■ row." This applies to progress in' motorcars as m other directions, and the ideal machine must contain, not the details which are- most_ popular 'at' the moment, but the most up-to-date, improvements which can possibly be incorporated m it. ■ „ ■'■■„ •". ' ' A PASSING FANCY And who is to say which among the latest ideas is to become a permanent institution and which is. merely a passing- fancy? • Nobody but the designer; and don't let us forget that that unhappy man is continually torn between "What. the public wants" and "What he thi.nks the public ought to, have." No, there is no royal road to the ideal car, if only for the reason that nearly e,very man's ideal differs from his neighbor's, and as long as we have motor-cars wo shall probably have the same cravings after', perfection, which arc, after all, only proof of the everyday motorist's interest '-in- his ma.chine. • : . * :