ARISTOCRATIC CARS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19721, 11 December 1926, Page 21 (Supplement)

ARISTOCRATIC CARS

i LUXURY ON WHEELS COSTLY AND RARE AUTOMOBILES AMERICAN CONTINENTAL. Off the beaten track of motorcar distribution are to be noted dozens of cars never seen by the stay-at-home New Zealanders. Many of these productions are of the highest class among automobiles—they put our best Packards, Cadillacs, Talbots and Austins into a relatively insignificant price class —but our acquaintance with them must necessarily be second-hand. The connoisseur of cars notices, when he studies automobile construction, that distinctive features are favoured by the Continental and trans-Atlantic schools of car building. It is rarely that any American car achieves a European appearance, and the reverse is also the case. Both in engineering and bodywork the breed runs true to type. Up in the Clouds. Here in New Zealand we are familiar with a range of American cars priced up to and beyond the £lOOO mark. The Chrysler Imperial 80, selling at under £lOOO, set a high mark in fine car construction and the Stutz, selling at £l4OO, or thereabouts, introduced new 1 features and strikingly handsome design. Then we have had graceful Packards, the massive Cadillac, and an occasional Marmon, while the Lincoln and Pierce-Arrow arc rare. Never seen here are such luxury cars as the McFarlan, virtually a talir-made car, the larger locomobiles, costing 12.000 dollars, the Dagmar, a four-cylin-der car priced upwards of 6000 dollars, as the McFarlan, virtually a tailor-made pensive cars made in America. A McFarlan catalogue seen recently n Wanganui rvcals that most of the ug cars are Lycoming powered, the ne eight range being driven exclus•.■•ly by Lycoming engines. But for s most costly ISne—a six-cylinder pro'uct—the McFarlan make engines of heir own construction. Such cars are milt up from the chassis to the buy•r’s specification, and body styles, colours. size, and upholstery are his for the choosing. The Lycoming Range. Other cars powered by Lycoming are the Auburn, with its graceful curved beading, the Gardner. Roamer, and Elcar. The largest Auburn eight. 146 inches from axle to axle, is the longest car made in America; but it is a long way short of England’s giant new twin six Daimler, which acknowledges a wheel base of .163 inches. Crossing the Atlantic, the car connoisseur venturing on flights of fancy among fine cars encounters a horde of automobiles rarely seen or heard of in New Zealand. Into this category fall England’s luxurious Aster, that supersports car, the Bentley, the eight-cylin-der Guy. the French Farman, Germa.uy’s Benz and Mercedes, Austria’s Steyr, and Italy’s Chiribiri, D’Yrsan, and: Isotta-Fraschini. Many of these cars embody novel features, and the growing British preference for more flexible engines is revealed in the increased numbr of sixes and eights now in production. The Beverly-Barnes is an eight-cylinder car of unusual design, and the Guy is another powerful eight. The Aster is a high-priced car which, in its latest design, reveals grace, smoothness, and ar- | resting beauty. The Sunbeam has fea- ' tured eight-cylinder cars for some time, land the latest models maintain the high I traditions reached in the first lint? I|‘ht cars produced under the Sunbeam crest. Lanchester a Thoroughbred. The Lanchester is an English thoroughbred which embodies interesting engineering features, and has been to the forefront in design. Externally its finish is magnificent, and the closed models are synonymous with the highest in car luxuxry. The Bentley, an English speed job. has as its only rival, of its type, the American Ducsenbcrg, built by a firm which proposes to give its costly productions a speed of 120 miles per hour. New features of the Bentley six, which would acknowledge defeat by nothing on the road, are mechanical refinements, including propulsion of the overhead camshaft by means of a series of eccentrics running in a vertical tunnel. The Continent bristles with motorware bearing the cachet of distinguished motor firms. The big Renaults of France are elegant in symmetry of their line, and flash by like meteors. The Farman is a magnificent car, unorthodox but powerful, and lean and eager in its sweeping body line. So with the Minerva, made in Belgium, though Minerva closed models can be painfully cumbersome, and the rugged Mercedes, a German six of enormous cylinder capacity. Italy produces the speedy little Chiribiri, the Fiat, and the aritocratic Isotta Franschini, and Spain yields the His-pano-Suiza, one model of which is made in France.

TELL-TALE CAR TO CONVICT SPEED FIENDS LIVERPOOL CORONER’S VISION. , Mr S. Brighouse, in returning a verdict of death from misadventure at an inquest at Southport on Christopher Viarley Crossley, aged 37. a dairyman, of Liverpool Road, Ainsdale, who was killed by a motor-car while crossing the road on Saturday, said occurrences of this kind would be reduced by 80 per cent, if both motorists and pedestrians would use care. John G. Johnson, a shipping clerk, of: In verpool, the driver of the ettr, said! his speed at the lime of the accident was about 25 to 30 miles an hour. He admitted that at one period of the journey he might have been doing more than 40 miles an hour, but it was on a stretch of rolad where there could not possibly be an accident. The Coroner: Nobody has any right to go at that speed. If it is not legally wrong it is morally wrong. It is the -lust for speed which causes half the trouble. There should be some invention so that the police could stop a dar, open the mechanism, and ascertain the speed of the car.