Page 7 Advertisements Column 3

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15130, 26 January 1917, Page 7

‘■'That's the first time a motor car has ever come up that hill,” remarked a farm laddie breathlessly to its occupants, as they- looked back from the crest on the pioneer tracks left by the closegripping rubber tyres. That had been the only doubt—whether on that rough and fairly loose clay surface the tyres would get enough grip for the engine to get in telling enough woric on such a grade. This must in steepness have averaged 1 in 4 over its short length of perhapy a couple of hundred yards, with an extra- pinch of about 1 in 3 in the roughest part. This neat thing in the way of hills occur along a back road running inland from the Cliffs, between Cargill's Castle and Black Head, and is about aoreast of the latter landmark. The lad was breathless because he had run from a farmhouse near thb brow of the “pinch” so as to be in at the death. “Hundreds of cars,” he said, “have come from Caversham way and stopped at the top of this, and more still have come from the Brighton Green Island Hoad and stopped at the bottom. Tours is the first car to go down or come up—the first that’s ever been on it that I know of.” The trial took place last evening, the spot having been selected, after much scouring of the country roads around Dunedin, as being the toughest nut to crack in the district. The car, a Dodge, driven by H. Markham, went down with two occupants, and' came up with three, the additional passenger being a member of the Dunedin Evening Star, who had declined the down journey, but stepped aboard the slowlymoving car as it approached the foot of the hill after turning, partly in response to urgent requests for more live ballast in the back seat, and partly because he had been greatly reassured by tbe car’s behavious coming down. Thus the car tackled its climb without taking a run at it; moreover its driver declared the ascent would have been made still more easily had there been aboard the car’s full load of five persons.* “Herald” wanteds are read by thousands every night. Fourteen words for a shilling cash.