A THOUSAND MILES MOTOR TEST

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10848, 15 December 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

A THOUSAND MILES MOTOR TEST

After six days of strenuous effort and unceasing watchfulness on the part of competitors, and one rather serious accident, the^ Dumlop 1000-Miles Motor Reliability Test came to an end on a recent Saturday opposite the Salvation Army Barracks, m Victoria Parade, Melbourne. The -winner turned up m O. Camphin, who drove his 12-h.p. Darracq over tlie 1000 miles m 391ir 58min. t with the loss of three points only. The second man was T. Rollasori, in* a 10-h.p. De Dion, who lost 36 points, and occupied 45hr 7min. Third man was W. R. Grimwade, who drove an Australian-made Tarrant car. He lost 40 points, but occupied only 37hr 23^min. Kellow m the 40-h.p. Napier had wretched luck. A big Newfoundland dog charged the car, which was travelling at schedule speed, and got mangled. It bent a rod underneath the car m the process, and threw the wheels out of line to such an extent that they tore the tyres off every few yards, and, generally steering was almost impossible; All the $ame, the great Napier car was only three hours behind schedule time. The rest of the prize winners were A. G. Hampton; R. Edols, F. B. Roche, F. E. Fay, Guy Madden, and C. B. Kellow. The general teaching of the test, writes the Bulletin, is that, for all-round reliability, 6 and 8-h.p. single cylinder cars cannot be beaten. The three that started all finished. Three cars fractured their frames, and coils and frame springs also proved to be too lightly made m the imported machines for Australian roads. There was only one serious accident, m which a 15-h.p. De Dion car turned turtle while travelling at 40 miles an hour. Strange to say, although both occupants Avere severely injured, the car was quite undamaged, and was driven back to Melbourne by a young driver without any trouble. Another solemn lesson is that, for low petrol consumption and fast time and all-round reliability, the Australian-built car is a lot ahead of most of the imported ones.