THE ENGLISH MARKET.

Southland Times, Issue 19395, 8 November 1924, Page 19 (Supplement)

THE ENGLISH MARKET.

BRISKER BUSINESS EXPECTED A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT. Although the Motor Show is still a month ahead writes a Lohdoh correspondent, several firms announce that their 1925 models will be on view immediately. There was a time when every departure from conventional practice was a guarded secret until revealed at the great annual exhibition at Olympia. But important changes are tew nowadays, and outwardly at least the new season’s models look very much like those of the current year. Moreover, the show is not the best place in the world for explaining minor improvements to the public. It is always frightfully crowded. It is to a great extent a social event. It is attended by thousands of people who are keenly interested in cars, but have uo immediate prospect of purchasing one —more especially a new one. The show is intensely fascinating in these days of universal motoring ih one form or another, when even schoolboys can identify all the principal makes of hiotor-cars at a distance but the trade does hot look to it for immediate orders to the extent it used to do. It does valuable propaganda Work, but the harvest is reaped afterwards. The displaying of new models in the show-rooms, before the exhibition opens, helps’ to relieve the pressure without detracting from the immense popularity of the motor show. ENGLISH PROSPECTS. The trade is looking forward hopefully to brisket business in 1925. The summer now over has been a wretched one from a weather point of view, and has indeed been dull and wet enough to persuade many people to run their old cars for another year. Optimists hold, however, that we cannot possibly have another summer as bad, and believe that there will be a bigger demand for new cars, in the hope that 1925 will be more of an outdoor year. Statistically the prospects are good. Contrasted with America, the motor salesman must find England almost like virgin soil. The United States boasts of one car for every seven people, and California even claims one car for every three inhabitants. England, on such a basis, is in its motoring infancy, while the Dominions and India arp still far from saturation point. There should be greatly-increased car sales within the next twelve months, especially as the American system of extended payments is catching on here. GARAGING DIFFICULTIES. One of the minor difficulties in England is the lack of garage accommodation. A great number of fairly well-to-do people live in houses in terraces, or with gardens so small that it would not be easy to fit a garage into them. One genius has devised a sort of disappearing platform, or lift, which will lower one’s motor into an underground garage in the basement, but the cost of the contraption would be prohibitive save to people sufficiently wealthy to hire accommodation elsewhere. The would-be motorist oversea is usually better off, as far as garage accomodation is concerned. Even if he lives in a flat, he can garage his car nearby, whereas in London one has to search high and low to find a home for one’s car. 1925 MODELS. It is already clear that the bulk of the 1925 cars will be low or medium-priced models of about 10-12 h.p.., selling at less than £3OO, complete. A number of the world-famous factories in England and on the Continent, which once turned out only high-powered and expensive cars are marketing a model rated at something about 15 h.p., and selling it at under £5O0 —and these are really “class” cars. These latter models will come down somewhat in price later on and will, I think, become increasingly popular in the Dominions and India. The British, Italian, and French mechanics are wonderfully good workmen, and the stuff they turn out is beautifully finished. Cars of this type will get up to 70 miles an hour with ease and they are low in petrol consumption. Moreover, they look highclass, and they last“for ever.” CHEAPER CARS. England’s cheapest cars are being made to do between 30 and 40 miles to the gallon and work up to a speed of 40-50 miles an hour, if pushed, but their small size is against them for work on the country roads of the Dominions and India. Of course, I know by practical experience how the American and Canadian products dominate the oversea trade but I think that within the next two or three years the English makers will be doing a far bigger business abroad than they do now —and also some of the Continental factories. Speeds are certainly going up rapidly. Spofts models of 14 h.p. are now guaranteed to get up to 80 miles an hour, and on the sea front at Brighton the other day a speci-ally-geared 11 h.p. car got up to 70 miles an hour at the end of a half-mile run with a standing start. FLUCTUATION IN PETROL PRICES. English motorist are up in arms against the petrol companies. The essential spirit dropped 3|d a gallon the other day, and the price is now Is 6jd per gallon, though a non-combine fuel labelled as No. 1 is selling at Is 5d per gallon. Motorists are not grumbling at the drop, which is welcome enough, but at the fact that petrol prices are constantly going up or down, and that there always seems to be a rise just before the summer, when the average driver increases his consumption. What the motoring public would like to know is what is really a fair selling price for petrol, and why it is that prices vary so much in different parts of the world. When I motored overseas I could never understand why there was such a big difference in the price of petrol in India and South Africa, or why the price in the Dominions was so very much higher than in England. I never lost the impression that the oversea motorist was paying more than really keen competition would have charged him. THE STEAM CAR. From a fuel point of view it is a pity that steam cars have not made more progress. They are silent, very fast, marvellous hillclimbere, and are of course, free from gears. The latest type is said to start from cold in 3| minutes, against the old 15 minutes of the fire-tube boiler. The latest model steamer looks externally just like an ordinary petrol car, yet very few people are bold enough to buy them, and the average motorist Could not tdl you where you could get one. I wonder sometimes the makers do not try to push them in the Dominions. The newest models are of course, infinitely superior to the old types, which seemed to have to stop to take in water at frequent intervals. A simple and cheap steam car would, one imagines, sell easily enough almost anywhere.