RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31057, 12 May 1966, Page 32

RANDOM REMINDER

KING OF THE JUNGLE

Motor racing in all its variolas guises holds tremendous appeal today, although for us there is little delight in listening to snarling exhausts and watching someone travelling at 103 miles an hour on his thirty-seventh lap creep slowly up on someone else doing 98 miles an hour on his thirty-fifth lap. The destructive streak in most children is reflected in the popularity of stock car racing, where the principal aim appears to be to bash the other bloke to bits. This sort of performance has reached a peak in the United States: some of the major stock car races there require the participants tn cover the last of

their 10 laps in an anticlockwise direction, after doing the first nine clockwise. The shambles effected by the reversing of course by the leading cars may be imagined. Cross-country navigation in cars has it merits, although it can very well provide grounds for divorce. Motor rallies cause discomfort and sometimes discord, but they seem to be a reasonably good test of driving ability, endurance, and general astuteness. It was therefore rather surprising to read, in an evening newspaper, that the gruelling East African Safari motor rally had been won by a Tarzandan in a Peugeot On second thoughts, perhaps this inteUigence

should not have caused raised eyebrows. Edgar Rice Burroughs created a simple creature, strong, decent, full of the right sort of instincts, as befitted a member of the British aristocracy. And no doubt his descendants have progressed far beyond the tea parties of Whipsnade Zoo and are able to dismantle a diffy in a jiffy. But it would seem a rather unfair advantage, having a Tarzanian at the wheel in so exacting an event. It would simply be no problem for him to whip hand over hand across jungle to the last service station while the other disconsolate competitors plodded through the torrential rain and about four feet of mud.