From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Steering wobble issue at high speed and passenger motion sickness in the experimental 11-EX vehicle.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 71\3\ scan0063 | |
| Date | 5th January 1926 | |
| 48900 PN{Mr Northey}2/DN5.1.26. TO Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} FROM PN{Mr Northey} When recently driving 11-EX (CWB 10,000 miles Experimental, having Weyman body), a steering-wobble tried to develop at 76 m.p.h. The road surface was very wet and not very lumpy, so that I was somewhat surprised. Are you surprised also, or do you think that in spite of the tyre pressures being maintained at points we have found O.K. from this point of view, we must expect occasional tendencies to steering-wobbles, and that also our owners of "Phantoms" must also expect to have the Shadow of Death hanging over them from this cause? An interesting and somewhat regrettable feature in connection with this car is that I found most people when riding at the back for any length of time, inevitably became more and more green, and would have been actually sick if their positions from back to front had not been changed. In one case, two young men at Sandhurst complained of this, and in another, Mrs. P.N., who practically never feels unhappy at the back of a closed car, and two other young ladies. It was suggested by some of these passengers that, although they are used to motoring quite fast on quite bad roads, they mostly have done so on smallish cars having short wheelbases, which never sway gracefully and slowly with the undulating motion we are used to connecting with a Cross-Channel steamer, but that the pot-holes on the road surface have a jerking (probably uncomfortable) but quite un-sick-like effect; whereas the comfortable easy motion of the Rolls-Royce springs seem to have quite a different effect. It may be that the above impressions are worth noting as a slight assistance in dealing with what is at times a very difficult problem, which, in spite of there being a slightly humourous aspect about it, is in fact a very serious matter, because if it became established in people's minds that, sitting in the back of a luxurious Rolls-Royce car, they were likely to be made to feel "iller" and "iller", our sales probably would fall off - do you not think so ? P.N. P.N. | ||