Racing—A Renunciation.

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 2, 1 December 1908, Page 51

Racing —A Renunciation.

(S. F. EDGE IN Aitto-Car.)

Sir, — The views which have been so well expressed in your eolums with regard to dangerous motor racing have interested and impressed me greatly. I feel that you will realise that the question is a very serious one for the manufacturer. There can be no doubt that the rapid development of the automobile has in the past been very largely due to racing, and the public undoubtedly then took a great interest in it; but your recent utteianees have developed the fact that there is now an immense volume of public feeling against dangerous racing, and that there is a general idea that the automobile is developed and established so sufficiently that racing demonstrations of an extreme type are no longer neeessaiy. As one who has been responsible for most of the racing in this country, I think it may perhaps be my duty in deference to public feeling to be the first manufacturer to publicly announce my intention of withdrawing Napier cars from all dangerous competitions. In making this announcement I hope the public will accept my assurance that my sole object in automobile racing in the past was to demonstrate the ability of a British manufacturer to hold his own in this high type of engineering against any one in this world, notwithstanding the long start our faulty legislation gave our foreign competitors in this great industry. I feel that that object has now been achieved, and that the British motor-car now leads in type, design and woikmanship. As I have said, this matter is a serious one for the manufacturer, and it is possible that abstention from racing contests may, as some think, leact upon my firm. I must therefore qualify this declaration of my withdrawal from abnormal contests by claiming liberty to lead the way again if I have mistaken the trend of public feeling. I would add that my decision in relation to racing will involve no relaxation in every possible scientific effort towards the refinement and development of the British motor-car.