In Reverse

NZ Truth, Issue 1198, 15 November 1928, Page 6

In Reverse

— «, — . : ■ \. ■ ■ TN failing to establish charges of perjury preferred against a well-known Dunedhv motor-gar-age proprietor and his employee, the Crown has done the general community a valuable service, m so far as the evidence for the defence lifted a? curtain of the second-hand car business to reveal at least one very spurious trade-secret. It was admitted by one, witness, a motor-mechanic, that on instructions from his employer he ' ' unwound the speedometer o I a customer's car about 10,000 miles Further, that he .was capable of doing the job at the rate of "1000 miles m threequarters of a minute." The case before the court'exposed something of the under-, hand methods . adopted by the trade to hood\yjnk' purchasers of second-hand machines. If one motor-dealer publicly admits that the operation wa.s performed m his own workshop for the purpose of obliging a cutiitonier who A\ v as about to demonsti*ate to a prospective buyer, and that he had witnessed the tampering of speedometers on more than one; occasion, it is a fairly safe deduction to assume that "reversing" the speedometer is a commonplace practice with sec-ond-hand car dealers.