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).
Page from 'The Autocar' magazine featuring several short articles or 'Jottings' on motoring topics during wartime Britain.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 160\5\ scan0091 | |
| Date | 27th December 1940 | |
| December 27th, 1940. The Autocar 651 ELSE; AND FOR EVERYTHING YOU GAIN, YOU LOSE SOMETHING" EMERSON Kilometre I SEE that a reader of the Radio Times has been taking an announcer to task for pronouncing kilometre as kilómmetre. Surely, he writes, he does not speak of a centimetre as a centímeter? Both kilometre and centimetre are words well installed in motoring vocabulary, so I am wondering whether the majority of my readers say kilómeter. Right or wrong, I have done so for years, but I am quite capable of pronouncing it either way if someone will put me wise. Suggestion HAVE you obtained your copy of The Autocar Motorists' Diary? Stocks are running short as I found the other day when I sent to the publishing department for half a dozen copies to send to motoring friends. This little book makes a present much appreciated by people who are always wanting to know something to which the answer is to be found in this compact volume. It is an encyclopaedia in miniature and it costs 2s. 5½d.{John DeLooze - Company Secretary} this year, 5½d.{John DeLooze - Company Secretary} being the purchase tax. In these days the value of a gift is not how much it cost, but its utility, so I suggest that if you are in doubt about what to send to an enthusiastic motorist, you will be not far wrong in sending The Autocar Motorists' Diary. I warned motorists against the dangers of these holes and also of running into telegraph wires during a bad raid. Let me once again repeat this warning. Another danger during an alert lies in the fact that it is impossible to hear the whistle of a bomb inside a car when it is moving, and one is unable to take the precaution of flinging oneself flat on the ground. By far the safest thing when bombs start falling is to stop and shelter, and yet many motorists seem to drive faster and faster as each bomb falls. I suppose it is a sign of panic, yet to my mind anyone who is likely to panic in such circumstances should not drive a car at all. He is not only a danger to himself but to the men and women whose job it is to be out in the "blitz." Jottings By THE SCRIBE The Purchase Tax IN spite of what the Customs people told me the other week about the Purchase Tax on resoled tyres, either they were in error in telling me that they are subject to the tax or they misunderstood me. It appears that if you have your own cover resoled, a tyre retains its identity and therefore is not subject to the tax, but if you merely buy a resoled tyre then you pay. The moral is, have your tyres resoled before they have worn so thin that the fabric may be damaged, in which event the Tyre-sole company will refuse to resole them. * * * All for the Cause WITH so many garages being taken over for A.R.P. and Army purposes it is becoming increasingly difficult for the private motorist to get even the smallest job done, and practically impossible to get a car washed. I have twice recently been approached by small children complete with buckets, sponge and leathers offering to wash my car for a small fee. One little group even went so far as to produce a receipt for £1 3s. 10d. from the Honorary Treasurer of their local Spitfire Fund. They spend most of their spare time washing cars and giving the money to the Fund. I could not refuse their request although I had washed the car myself only the day previously. But the result was very "smeary." * * * Signposts LISTENING recently to John Hilton broadcasting to the Forces, I was interested to hear him suggest that it is high time the signposts were put back. He was talking about dangerous driving which is largely due to thoughtlessness, and confessed that he himself was guilty of nearly causing an accident by stopping "to ask the way" on a cross roads, being nearly rammed by an army lorry. I agree with Mr. Hilton that many accidents must be caused in this manner, and all through the lack of signposts. Surely signposts could be erected. They could quite easily be removed should danger of invasion become imminent. The lack of signposts has, of course, never been a deterrent to fifth columnists as it is quite easy for them to ask their way about the country. * * * Blitz Holes WE have recently published photographs of cars with their noses in bomb craters and you have probably seen other photographs in the "dailies." You will recall that months ago, before the blitz started, * * * Clean the Windscreen Daily UNLESS a car is cleaned daily in the sense with which Sarah Battle would apply the term to her motor car, its windscreen is always coated with a slight film of practically invisible dirt. The truth of this dictum is apparent whenever rain begins to fall. We switch on the wiper, and, no matter how experienced we are, we are always just a little astonished to see the rubber blades squeezing a tiny wave of thin brown mud before them. We reflect that only an hour ago we gave the screen some pretence of a dry clean, rubbing it hastily over with a rag from the cubby hole. The all but invisible film of dirt is a factor in the poor visibility of which we are conscious when night falls. It is twin sister to another unsuspected film of dirt which is more easily overlooked, namely, the dust film on the disc of diffuser material behind the headlamp mask. If dirt befouls both these alleged "transparent" panes, through one of which the driver looks, whilst all our scanty ration of light must emerge from behind the other, no wonder we complain in the black-out that vision is difficult. The diffuser disc should be cleansed weekly on all cars in daily use. The windscreen should be cleaned daily in dry weather, using water mixed with a little paraffin or methylated spirit, and afterwards polished till it shines like the silver on a ducal table. [Image Captions] Very smeary. Stranger in these parts. Stop, look and listen. A 17 | ||