PETROL SUBSTITUTES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19783, 5 March 1927, Page 10

PETROL SUBSTITUTES

DEMONSTRATION IN FRANCE. The Automobile Club in France has just completed a demonstration in which 20 motor vehicles covered 1000 miles each in 10 days and never used a drop of petrol, the object being to prove to the public the extent to which the country was independent of foreign motor fuels. The vehicles used were all equipped with normal types of engines, and travelled through Brittany, Normandy, Picardy and along the frontier of Belgium, the only mechanical faults reported being the breakage of a. few springs. The whole twenty vehicles completed the 1000 miles route. Among them were a Baby Peugot, a Citroen taxicab, an old Peugot touring car with a producer gas installation, a 13.9 Renault car fitted with a very wide body carrying nine persons in three lines of three each, and also fitted with producer gas system, three-passen-gcr cars which ran on acetylene gas, a number of vehicles using special liquid fuels produced in different laboratories and distilleries in France, and heavy vehicles ranging up to a 3J ton pneu-matic-tyred lorry. Two Peugot open cars were lent by the manufacturers, which used a liquid fuel produced in France, and which they consumed with absolute normal engine setting even to the carburettors. It is considered probable that the substitute fuels demonstrated will first, find a use on commercial vehicles such as lorries, motor buses and taxi-cabs, and gradually will be extended to private cars.