THE CYCLE CAR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144132, 30 June 1913, Page 7

THE CYCLE CAR.

A REVOLUTION IN MOTORING. MINIATURE MACHINES. (By Charles E. Hands in the London Daily Mail.) I saw the funniest little microbe of a motor-car the other scurrying along in the Piccadilly traffic. Alongside the taxicabs it looked like a stsam pinnace among a fleet of Dreadnoughts. It was the tiniest Httlo waistcoatpocket edition of a car that might have come out of a toy shop, but' a perfect little model in every detail made to the scale of a Shetland pony in the Row. It had a little bonnet and the dearest little lamps and horn and tiny little mud-guards over its little wheels, and it would have been pretty to look at rather than comic if it had not been for the fact that two grown-up people, a young man and woman, had squeezed into it. They down among the wheels of the other traffic in a block by Berkeley Street, and a facetious drayman looking down from his perch said: “I’ll tell baby about you; playing with his birthday present.” 'When the traffic block was released the little car scampered away as quickly as any of them.

“It will bo quite a car when it grows up,” I said to a motoring friend. “Don’t laugh at it,” he said, “or you will be sorry for yourself later on. It is going to grow up fast enough. That little thing is going to revolutionise traffic. In a very little while it will be the king of the road.” And he told mo some things about the cycle-car that I did not know and had not even susiieoted. THE MAN WITH £IOO.

When you stop to think about it the doiuocratisation of the automobile was sure to come sooner or later. It is only a few rears since cycling was a iasliionable amusement hopelessly beyond the means of the working classes. But it did not take long to democratise the bicycle. The country shopgirl’s humble moans enable her to take her summer evening excursions on a better-made bicycle than duchesses used to ride in the days of the Battersea Park promenade. The automobile at first was the costly luxury of the rich. Already it is one of the everyday necessaries of motor-omnibuses and the big cars and the like for the prosperous business man. And now the evolution of the funny little microbe car has suddenly brought U.V3 pleasure and the convenience of motoring within the reach of tho moderately well-to-do, the hundred-pound man. There are hundreds of thousands of them, and before long nice out of ten of thorn will have a car. It was only in 1910, Icrs than three years ago, that the first little cycle-car was made. It was just an experiment, and was regarded as a freak, but it sold as soon as it was made. Tho man who made it built another and sold that, and thou some more and sold thorn, and then some other makers began to build and to sell,'without, however, it being generally recognised that anything of importance war, happening until at the motor show at Olymnia last June it was •uddenly discovered that fifty models of these small runabout cars w-ere on exhibition and were selling like hot cakes. To-day there aro more than a hundred manufacturers of bantam motor-cars turning them out ns fast as they can produce, hut not nearly fast enough to meet the ever-growing demand. , MINIATURE MOTOR-CARS. It is the development of t\j light motor-cycle engine that has produced the cycle-car. Motor-cycling is not everyone's money. It is a trifle too hazardous as a sport and a trifle too muddy as a pastime. The adventurous young man might disregard its hazards, its vibration, and its muddy ways, but the invention of the side-car intensified its disadvantages by impressing them upon the mind of the adventurous young woman. She demanded something with mudguards and conversation and the possibility of attire more becoming than hideous yellow overalls. So tho highly developed little motor-cycle engine was mounted on four wheels and called a cycle-car. ' Now tho cycle-cars aro developing on the linos rather of a miniature motor-car then of a four-wheeled motor bicycle. They are being built with all the mechanical complications of gearboxes and differentials, live axles, fourcylinder water-cooled engines, and all the rest of it. Tho word “cycle-car” does not describe them any longer. They are not, as that word implies, a compromise between a cycle and a car, but a compromise between the ambition to drive a motor and inability to purchase one. They ore not so fast as a motor-cycle with side-car because they weigh more, but they can reach fifty miles an hour under favourable conditions, and can easily go thirty miles an hour on the road. And they can get sixty miles travel out of a gallon of petrol, and it costs between three-half-pence and twopence a mile to run them.

The real working definition of the cycle-car is a hundred-pound motor-car that will go. Everyone I know is either going to buy one at once or wait a little while before buying one. The little car is the new thing, the long-felt want, the prevailing craze. How tho little car appeals to tho popular imagination I realised when a friend took mo for a run in one of them. Everyone turned to look’as wa scampered through the streets, and when we stopped a little crowd gathered. It cost all told £96 10s, and it went like the wind. It had a little hood in case of rain, and it was about‘Bft. long and 4ft. wide, and it held the two of us comfortably, and it will go to Brighton and back easily in the day. What more can you wish for than a car that will hold two and go to Brighton and back? If it is’ big enough to hold two it is big o'nough for anything. In a little while the roads will be black with droves of them. Tho real motoring ago is only just beginning. The little car is not only going to revolutionise the road; it is going to change tho conditions of life. It is, going to take people to live where they can get garage room. Already, in the outer suburbs builders putting up small house property are using odd corners of land for. garages. The whiupet cars take up little room, but there will be such multitudes of them that special garage accommodation will have to bo provided for in all new building schemes. A NEW AND IMMENSE FIELD. They are being sold, I learn, largely upon the instalment plan, like pianos and talking machines, and small house furniture. That brings tho motor-car at once within roach of the skilled workman. And the skilled workman can make one for himself. In addition to the hundred manufacturers who are turning out cars there are people all over the country of a mechanical turn of mind who are purchasing component parts and putting the little oars to-

gethfir themselves. The bulk of the purchasers of cycle-cars are people who nave never driven a motor before or ridden a motor-cycle- The little cal's have tapped a now and immense field. In tho mechanical Midlands many ladies are driving them already. It means death to the suffragette movement, and it will not do lawn tennis any good. Social philosophers point out that suffragettism did not set in until the motor-car had made the reads uncomfortable for pony carts and bicycles. The hundred-pound car will restore to thousands of energetic young women of the middle classes their lost freedom of the road. At present the cycle-car is still in the experimental stage. But it has not far to go to develop a working standard of perfection. All the main experimental engine wbrk has been done for it by the big car and the motor-cycle. A standard type of cycle-car that can be ■ manufactured wholesale will soon be developed, for an enormous wholesale business is waiting to be done, and then the little vehicles will grow cheaper and cheaper. In a year or two, we will bo a nation of motorists, and tho rich, if they want exclusive enjoyment, will have to take to aeroplauing.