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).
Copy of a letter from Mr. Thorne Donnelley detailing a cross-country car journey and its performance.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 47\2\ Scan141 | |
| Date | 6th September 1929 guessed | |
| COPY OF LETTER FROM MR. THORNE DONNELLEY. I am sending a copy of this letter to Mr. Dreiske and Mr. Ainsworth, as I think it will be of interest to them as well as to you. After returning from my southern trip, I started for the Coast and will attempt to give you a few details of how the car performed. I left St.{Capt. P. R. Strong} Louis at nine-thirty Sunday morning, made Kansas City in three hours and fifty minutes, distance 256 miles, and continued to LaJunta, Colorado, arriving there at two A.M. Monday, distance 941 miles, which figures a slightly better average than 57 miles an hour. About 350 miles of this was on concrete; the remaining distance was over gravel roads which were none too good. I turned in at LaJunta and told the hotel clerk to waken me at seven o'clock, but for some reason he went off duty without telling the day clerk to call me and I did not get up until noon. From LaJunta I went to Gallup, but about twenty miles east of Gallup, I got into a cloudburst and when everything was all through, it took two teams of mules and six men to get me out, delaying me about two hours. The water at one time was right up to the floor boards of the car, and I had to be dragged about two hundred yards with mud up to the mules' stomachs. I spent the evening in Gallup and ran into Pasadena the next day, arriving there Tuesday evening. The whole trip between Topeka and Barstow was dirt and gravel roads. When I got to Needles, the official temperature was 122 degrees, and the desert is usually about 25 to 30 degrees hotter. I used the car around California and went down into Mexico with it, where the roads are perfect and which is no test for any car. I started back to my sister's ranch, which is twentyeight miles from Sheridan, Wyoming. When I arrived at Barstow, I found that the State troops were not permitting anyone to pass between Barstow and Salt Lake, as 165 miles of the road had been washed completely out and the Los Vegas dam had let go. However, I decided that rather than go 600 miles out of my way, I would take a chance at it, so I went up the road about a quarter of a mile, out around a field, and back on the Los Vegas road. They were right, as my speedometer showed a little over 167 miles where there was no road at all. -continued- | ||