A Glut of Old Cars.

Progress, Volume VII, Issue 2, 1 December 1911, Page 899

A Glut of Old Cars.

In a wayside inn in the Midlands of England, I met a dealer, a few weeks ago, who made a specialty of second-hand cars. He was a Londoner in a big way of business, and he told me a doleful tale of the difficulty, nay, the impossibility of getting rid of old pattern cars of high

horse-power. The sale of such cars has practically ceased, and London garages are so full of them that dealers are forced to ask rent for their storage. As a rule, the dealer in second-hand cars is quite prepared to store them free of charge, in the expectation of being repaid by his commission on the sale; but the market for old cars of forty horsepower and over has become so restricted that even a liberal commission off the sale price would not pay the storage charges for a fortnight. It is not altogether due to the fact that the popular demand of the moment is for

atecl, and increase rapidly as horse-power (i.e., bore) increases. So heavy is this burden that it has practically stopped the sale of the 40/50 h.p. car of a few years’ antiquity. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has come in for a fine lot of abuse on account of the inequity of his motor taxation scheme, and it is on the tapis that we may soon expect a complete revision of the scale and basis of the duties. A good suggestion— mooted just nowis that cars themselves should not be taxed, but that the duty on the petrol they consumed, which is at present 3d. on the

gallon, should be increased a certain amount. This would result in making the car user, not the car owner, pay the piper.

a car of moderate horse-power. There is still a big field for high-powered motor cars among that class to whom expense is no object, and who must have a limousine bodied vehicle, irrespective of the price. Indeed, the manufacturers who have confined themselves to the production of cars of this class, as for instance, the Rolls Royce Co., have not been able to keep pace with their orders. But between the forty and sixty horsepower car of to-day and its prototype of a few years ago there is an immense difference. The modern ear gives “all” the power it is rated at, but not so the older car, with its short stroke and big

bore. This, at first sight, would hardly seem justification for the extraordinarily depredated value of the big and old car. But when it is explained that the benign Government imposes a yearly tax on cars which is computed on the bore of the engines alone, it will soon be realised why these vehicles are now almost “two a penny.” These license duties are gradu-