TRIBUTE TO BRITAIN.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18203, 2 March 1929, Page 16

TRIBUTE TO BRITAIN.

Writing in “Automotive Industries” of America, a technical expert gives it as his opinion that there are in many European motor factories produciton methods which are quite different from American practice, but which appear to him capable of adaption to their national conditions. He gives in particular three of four specific illustrations of British production methods, one of-which is the system adopted by an important British manufacturer whereby all major drilling operations are carried out with the cylinder block in a heavy trunnion fixture which allows synchronised drilling in all its six faces. Commenting upon this tribute, the “Autocar” (London), says that in view of the so-often alleged impossibility of the British motor manufacturer attempting to accomplish anything worth while in the world’s export markets by reason of his lack of initiative or want of financial resources to equip his works with suitable machinery, it comes as something of a surprise to find expert trans-Atlantic opinion, not concerned with advertising, but with.actual production, recommending to his national manufacturers interesting ideas which a study of operations in British plants leads to the conclusion might be used with advantage here. No less notable a member of tho American motor industry than Mr C. Nash, speaking, at the annual banquet of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders on the eve of the opening of this year’s Motor Exhibition, said that the foundations of the automobile industry were laid in Great Britain when that enterprise was in its swaddling clothes in tlis Western hemisphere. He added that British manufacturers had always built well, and that his own natioral industry had gathered what they knew of the right way of manufacturing from them. “Mutual appreciation,” says tho Auto-car in conclusion, “not belittlement, makes for mechanical economical and international progress.”