In the Last Ditch

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 547, 27 December 1928, Page 8

In the Last Ditch

WHERE OLD MOTOR-CARS GO

IT is a traditional belief that one never sees a dead donkey. Exactly the same cannot be said about "dead” or wornout motor-cars, but there are many vehicles which have given up the struggle with bad roads and careless drivers, and now lie abandoned in places where the eye of man seldom looks. It is estimated that 10,000 ears go out of commission annually in New Zealand.

/"AVER 30 years have passed since the first motor-car was brought to this country —a precarious thing upon four huge wheels, with a spluttering engine protesting vehemently from the depths of the structure. Since then many thousands of machines have left the factories, run their race and reached the scrap-heap, and to-day the Dominion possesses nearly 200,000 vehicles. But where do all the abandoned cars go? Do they disappear mysteriously like the traditional dead donkey, *****************

or would a careful check reveal their presence in secluded corners of paddocks and gardens, at suburban garages and in wrecking workshops? These are difficult questions to answer, but investigations reveal that many motors leave the roads every year—lo,ooo Is suggested as New Zealand’s total-—without any apparent resting- place. Just now, when the holiday fever Is infecting the blood of all Aucklanders, every motor-car that will cough its way along the highroad is in commission. Trips north and south are undertaken in cheap second-hand cars instead of in trains or service buses, and dealers have spent an exceptionally busy few weeks in furnishing new owners with trouble-makers of vai-ious designs. When summer fades, however, and gives way fo the cold grey days of autumn and winter, many of these battered vehicles will leave the road finally, solving forever their own individual problems of petrol tax and repair bills. There is no systematic demolition of broken-down cars in New Zealand, although In Auckland there is a scrapheap of sorts where the most dilapidated machines are towed when their days of usefulness are finished.

Several motoring firms specialise largely in wrecking and in the distribution of spare parts, but even the activities of these concerns do not cover all the cars which disappear every year. It is the opinion of garage men in this city that the majority of abandoned motor-cars find their way into the country districts, where some of them are to be seen in use driving circular saws, pumping water, or providing motive power for small milking machines. Here and there in city and suburban back yards decrepit chassis, with the engines torn out are to be seen with high grass growing in profusion about them. Some are thrust beneath houses and forgotten; others lie, for the time being, In neglected corners of small garages. Launch Power Units The use of motor-car engines in launches is popular in Auckland, where the harbour sport claims many adherents, and many pleasure ciaft are propelled by units which at one stage of their active career carried a proud family along the highway in a different setting, of course. Modern youth will have his real motor-car in place of the toy ship which gratified the mechanical passions of his mid-Victorian brother, and quite a number of broken-down machines fall into the hands of ambitious youngsters, and are iater brought into short-lived commission beneath home-made bodies. This resurrection is essentially a transitory proceeding, but a source of endless experiment nevertheless before youthful dreams of Malcolm Campbell and Major H. O. D. Segrave are shattered by hard experience. A great many are destroyed by fire. Garages recover the charred remains, strip them of anything tb£t is likely to be of use, and run theTtemainder out to the junk heap for destruction. The Trade-in There are approximately 185,700 motor vehicles in New Zealand, or one to every 12 people. United States leads the world in this respect with one car to every five people, and Canada runs second with a car to every 11. Australia has one to 17 heads of population, and Great Britain one to 43. About one-third of the cars in New Zealand inhabit the four centres, Auckland, by reason of its population, leading in numbers. This is the day of the second-hand job for the man who is starting his motoring career, and the release from show-rooms of new machines is governed almost entirely by the demand for secondhand vehicles, the new purchase usually depending upon the "trade-in” upon the old. Because owners seldom report the destruction of old cars, a complete record of those which go out of service would be difficult of compilation. It is clearly established, however, that when a motor is thrown aside in this country, its complete period of usefulness has been served, and it creaks its way to its resting place with something of the spirit of William of Orange, who. on an historic occasion, exclaimed; "I will die in the last f ch!”