THRILLS OF THE ROAD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20901, 16 December 1929, Page 19

THRILLS OF THE ROAD.

SOME NARROW SHAVES. PIONEERS OF MOTORING. EXCITING ADVENTURES Some amazing adventures of the pioneers in motoring ore recalled by Mi S. F, Edge, the only Briton to win the Gordon Bennett Cup. in an article in a London journal. He says:— At a moment when the whole of the motoring world—and who is not either an actual or a potential motor user—is taking stock of the new season’s cars, one recalls with surprise that just over a generation ago every motor journey was regarded as a thrilling adventure,, and only 33 years have elapsed since the abolition of a law providing that every self-propelled road vehicle must be preceded by a man carrying a red flag. The aped limit was then four miles an hour. The law was uniformly hostile to motorists, and road racing, which played so important a part in automobile development abroad, has never been permitted in Great Britain. There was. however, nothing to prevent a reliability trial, and one was organised by the Royal Automobile Club m 1900. The course of about 1000 miles included one very steep hill near Kendal, and having ascended’ this for some 500 yards, I found it necessary to change gear at a particularly stiff gradient. The car had been prepared very hurriedly for this trip, and the clutch selected this moment to cease work. The brakes moreover, would only function in a forward direction, so the car began to run backwards at an ever-increasing pace. My two passengers jumped for it while there was yet time, but I stayed at the wheel. Fortunately, I was able to bring the machine down without mishap, still going backwards, although it was an experience which I should not care to repeat.. It would, of course, be impossible with modern brakes. FLUNG INTO THE AIR. In fact, the owner-driver of this year of grace would despise the brakes on the most expensive cars of those days. It is just 25 years since Clifford Barp, one 0* the most brilliant English drivers at that time, was reduced to tying up the catch of his brake-lever with a length of wire when he wps in the Isle of Man competing for a place in Great Britain’s Gordom.'Bennett Cup team that year, I expect the present generation is hardly aware that there were ever such things as motor tricycles, yet it was on these machines, in the 'nineties, that I did my first motor racing. They were comparatively expensive, for a fast machine would Cost anything up to £l2o—a big sum in those days—but they proyided us with plenty or excitement, and the races were often amazingly close. One of my narrowest escapes occurred on the track at Aeton, Birmingham, I was leading the field when my front fork snapped without the slightest warning, and I was told afterwards that I was flung high into the air and turned a complete somersault before pitching into the middle of the track. I was not quite unconscious, and could distinctly see the other riders bearing down on me and my wrecked tricjcle; but by skilful drivin" they just avoided me. PARIS TO BERLIN RACE. In the early days of this century the big road races for the Gordon Bennett Cup rendered the greatest possible service to the motoring movement by drawattention to the petrol vehicle as a reliable means of motion at an astonishing speed over existing roads. It was the symbol of international motoring supremacy then, in much the same way as the Schneider Trophy is today the blue riband of the air. But Great Britain was slow in entering the field, and. in 1901 I was our sole representative -in the famous race from Paris to Berlin. The cars left Paris at short intervals. A massed start was impossible, for even in those days We did 50 to 60 tniiea per hour on the roads, and to add to our risks the early starters set up a continuous cloud of dust which rendered the drivers who followed almost blind from first to last, unless they could force their way to the front. On this occasion I had picked up several places by the time I neared Sedan, and, dimly seeing another car ahead, I swerved sufficiently to avoid him, and accelerated for all I was worth. Before I had time to think of possible trouble I bad crashed into a projecting wall, which was completely hidden behind a veil of dust. My passenger—Mr Montague Napier, now the designer of the famous Napier-Lion aero engines—and I were unhurt, but the car was too badly damaged to continue. One of the early motorists’ great bugbears wa« tyre trouble, and for many years this problem defied every attempt at solution. I was a firm believer in the future of the pneumatic *yre. but my faith received some pnstj shocks. In 1897, for example, Charles Jarrott and I were driving down to Norfolk in a car equipped with the very latest thin® in pneumatics, when we sustained one or two punctures. This was only the beginning of the trouble. No sooner had we repaired and inflated one tyre than another would spring a leak or burst, and, incredible though it sounds to-day. we were stuck in the same spot for no less than 24 hours, vainly trying to get all four tyres inflated at the same time, OYER A SPIKED COURSE. There was another and even more serious side to the matter. In 1904 a prominent racing driver was killed, it was said, because of a buret tyre, and I was asked demonstrate at the Crystal Palace that even at a high speed there was nothing dreadfully perilous about such a mishap. A special course was prepared, with 2m steel spikes set in iron plates, broken bottles, and chisels fixed, business end upuards, in a plank. Taking a racing car over this at 50 or GO miles per hour. I had a succession of terrific bursts, but by keeping a perfectly steady course I did something toward allaving the general scare that a burst at any speed was liable to render a car uncontrollable. |lie same day I took the car out again, swinging it violently from side to side in order to wrench a tyre from the rim. 1 resently I succeeded, and once more suffered no harm. But the tyre, as if in protest at such treatment, dashed at a knot of spectators, selected the representative of a famous newspaper, and bowled him over. For all that, those who witnessed the display began to admit that motorin'* could not be quite the life-and-death ad" yeutule they had previously believed it to be.