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Otago Daily Times, Issue 26228, 12 August 1946, Page 8

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MOTOR INDUSTRY JUBILEE PROCESSION IN LONDON (From a London Correspondent) July 29. Londoners saw the greatest road show ever presented in Britain, when 500 vehicles representing 50 years of motor transport paraded through the West End as part of the British motor industry’s jubilee celebrations. The £1,000,000 cavalcade on wheels, showing every kind of car produced during the last half century, was reviewed in Regent’s Park by the King and Queen. Motoring history became alive as vehicles from the earliest prototypes to the last word in super luxury touring cars, motor coaches, army and air force vehicles, tractors and lorries rolled by. The cavalcade was presented in four eras. First came the 1896-1904 cars, powered with a single cylinder of three or four horse-power, and capable of extremely feeble and uncertain performance. But 1896 did see the repeal of the Locomotives Act of 1865, which had required speed to be limited to four miles an hour, and one of the crew of three to walk at a distance of not less than 20 yards in front carrying a red flag! This period saw the transition from the first “ rattle-traps ” to the original Mercedes, Daimlers, Naniers. Fiats and Rolls-Royces. A 1900 de Dion Bouton model in the parade still had the original instruction book issued 46 years ago, and one of the quaint passages in it was: “The

reverse gear is £lB extra, but the makers do not recommend it being fitted.”

First Family Cars The 1906-1916 vehicles showed the coming of the light car, the family 10 and 12, the immediate ancestor of the most popular car to-day. It was remarkable to see the change between the 1914 and 1919 models. The post--1919 cars were no longer horseless carriages, and this period brought the introduction of the saloon body for cars of all horse-powers, four-wheeled brakes, and self-starters. There was the first Austin 7, a bull-nosed . Morris, and a T-model ford. There were also three famous cars—the 1000 horsepower Sunbeam, the first car to do 200 miles per hour; its later development, the Golden Arrow (which held the land-speed record at 231 miles an hour), and John Cobb’s Railton, which attained a speed of 269 miles an hour. These were mounted on trucks, as cars designed to be driven as at those speeds cannot be allowed a steering variation of more than six inches. And so the cavalcade went on until the' present-day cars drove by. Their features included independent springing, free wheels, automatic gear change, improved braking, and scientifically-de-signed and built bodywork, all adding to their smooth running and comparative noiselessness. High Standards of Precision “ War-time activities in _ the motor industry, which made the biggest of all industrial contributions to victory, and turned its hands to everything from aircraft and aero engines to bombs and torpedoes, have resulted in a notable raising of the standards of precision in car manufacture. Laboratory gauging methods producing finishes sometimes measurable to a millionth of an inch were introduced, and these are now being applied to car manufacture. Many owners of post-war cars, whicn have been built to the same design as pre-war models, have felt the improvement in performance. The parade did more than show in dramatic form the technical progress made during the past 50 years. It revealed the progress made by the manufacturers of England’s second biggest export, and the interests of the industry could be well served by a similar cavalcade in overseas countries.