TYRES BEFORE PETROL

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 244, 16 October 1942, Page 3

TYRES BEFORE PETROL

PRIVATE MOTORISTS ' PROBLEMS. MORE MILEAGE WARRANTED. Tyres and petrol are to the motor - ist what footwear is to the pedestrian, and in traversing, in his annual report, the position that has arisen in the Dominion since Japan's entry into the war, the Marlborough Automobile Association's president (Mr R. p. Furness) yesterday afternoon remarked that the chief problem confronting the private motorist in New Zealand during the past few months had been (and still was) how to keep his car on the road, not once a day or once every few days, but at all. The loss of Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies to the Japanese had resulted in the loss to the United Nations of supplies of the raw rubber from' which New Zealand drew its motor tyres, and the drying up of what had until then been one of the principal sources of the Dominion's petrol supplies. Althougli a new supply base for petrol (California) had soon been opened up, the rubber crisis had admitted of no such prompt solution, and it was tyres, rather than petrol, that really governed the motoring situation in this country to-day. "Not that we do not possess a petrol problem; we do. The gradual reduction of supplies of motor-spirit to private motor ists to 2, 1J and 1 gallons a month for the three main types of car has meant that many vehicles have had to be laid up, while the official request to 'keep cars mobile,' when not defeated by battery or other trouble, has resulted in owners becoming to all intents and purposes custodians for the Government of their vehicles. A mileage of 30 to 40 a month, if all goes well, does not enable the owner to derive much pleasure or relaxation from his possession," Mr Furness proceeded. After mature consideration, the two Motor Unions had recently decided to ask the Government to restore the petrol coupons to their full f ace value, and he thought that request was fully warranted. Naturally, if a man's tyres wore out as a result of his getting 60 instead of 30 miles' use of them per month, that would be his misfortune; but the net result of any slackening-off of the petrol embargo would, he made bold to say, render many more cars decently mobile — and thus fit to be used in case of national emergency — than it would put back into "cold storage" through tyre-failure.