FIRST “MOTOR KING”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1939, Page 8

FIRST “MOTOR KING”

ENGINE RUN ON WHISKY. FORTUNE TWICE MISSED. I found Charles Santier, the man ’who missed millions, the inventive genius who claims to have built Britain’s first motor-car, pottering about in the little engine shop he has ejected in ’his pictuesque garden at Malvern, Worcestershire, writes a special correspondent of the London newspaper, “The People.” White-haired and smiling, he dropped a condenser he was repairing and wiped greasy hands on an oily rag. “Come along into the house, he welcomed, “and I’ll tell you hofw Fortune knocked twice, but got no reply from me.” Charles led me into his pleasant parlour, dropped into an armchair, told me how he invented the free wheel, patented it for four years, and then let it lapse. “The moment. I dropped .it,”. he added, “the cyclemakers grabbed. So did the watchmakers, clockmakers and motor-car manufacturers.” Seventy-six-year-old Charles Santier smiled wanly. “But if in that I lost a gold mine, what did I not lose in the motor-car? True I had the sense to manufacture cars, but not the head for the financial side of the business.” It was in his small factory in Malvern Link in "87 that Charles began work on Britain’s first horseless carriage. Built at a time when the steam engine held undisputed sway, it had an even more novel claim to fame. It was probably the only car ever built that liked its little drop out of the bottle. It actually did some of its best mileage on whisky! “Yes,” chuckled Charles, “many a time I’ve emptied a couple of bottles of Scotch into the tank in order to get me home.” “An expensive fuel?” Mr Santier sighed at the memory. “Not very. Whisky was only 3s Gd a bottle then.” Britain’s first king of the road was two years constructing Malvernia—as he called Boneshaker No. I—and1 —and few people in Malvern knew that history was being made in a workshop close by. Those who did scoffed at Charles Santier as an optimistic dreamer. But in spite of their jeers, Charles carried on, making every forging and casting himself. At last the day arrived when the dream came. true. Malvernia, with its high wheels and bravery of brass, was ready for a grand tour of the Midlands. But the public was not ready for Malvernia. People ran from the “Devil’s Carriage” in a state of terror. Mr Santier received hundreds of insulting postcards. His wonder waggon became the butt of joke and caricature. Tolls were increased against selfpropelled cars. Public feeling became so intense that an Act was passed, proclaiming that each horseless carriage should have a hundred yards ahead a man walking with a red flag*by day, and by night with a red lamp! Though crippled in this way, Mr Santier and other pioneers carried on, while farmers flying past in their gigs, gave them the “horse laugh."