NOTHING NEW

NZ Truth, Issue 1193, 11 October 1928, Page 20

NOTHING NEW

AH M&s Are Many

Years Old

■ Many of the refinements seen on cars to-day and which are, regard-' .ed as hew, ape not infrequently quite old, and have been incorporated m cars many, years ago. Four wheel brakes, for instance, are at least 15 years old, and were standard on at least one car then. FRONT wheel drive is also much * older than moat people' imagine, as m the Variderbilt Cup of 1905 this type of transmission was fitted to one of the competing cars. * Even before that, a Dutch manufacturer produced a car m which the ■drive was transmitted to all four wheels. This form of car might even yet be the machine of the future. At that time it was regarded as an utter freak. ■ * The first manufacturer to make a real effort to produce a top gear car was the Rolls-Royce concern. They built a car with an eight cylinder "V" type engine, which could tackle any hill ordinarily met with m top gear, but the public did not want it and it went out of production. The use of the gears m those days was an obsession, and a car which could 1 climb hills without resorting to a low gear was looked upon as something so unusual as to be freakish and unreliable. • ■ The two-wheeled car balanced .. by means of a gyroscope, is, m the 'minds of many people, the design which will finally become the standard of the world. If this type of machine, however, should be placed m regular production, it will have been pre-dated many years by the Wplseley two wheeler, which was built m collaboration with "Louis Brennan, the well-known Australian inventor, who first introduced the gyroscope as a means of ; stabilizing Vehicles. This car made several trips aroUnd lionddn and created an enormous amount; of interest. r