Swank

Decorously joining in on the national party given this week by the U. S. motor industry (see p. 93), foreign makers last week gave prosperous U. S. citizens an opportunity to recapture the thrill they had in childhood when Mother brought home from London a Daimler exactly like Queen Alexandra's or Father returned from Berlin with a bellowing Blitzen-Benz.

There is something about some foreign cars which has been factually stated thus: "Rolls-Royce Ltd. give a comprehensive three years' guarantee with every new chassis sold by them. Under the terms of this guarantee not only is any defective part replaced, but it is also fitted to the chassis free of charge." There is also something about the little British roadbug at the humorous other extreme from Rolls-Royce, the Baby Austin. And on sale in Manhattan last week, after five years of successful manufacture by the German firm of Mercedes-Benz, was a medium-sized car in which the most advanced European features of construction have been merged: tube frame, engine at the rear, independent springing of all four wheels.

For years U. S. motor manufacturers have urged lowering of the U. S. tariff on cars, with the idea that only after this was done could they win reciprocal tariff cuts abroad and break heavily into European markets. Today, with the U. S. tariff on imported cars down to a trifling 10%, they are being bought for fun and swank in commercially negligible quantities. U. S. makers watch foreign imports in a mood of amused tolerance far different from that of automobile men overseas. In the United Kingdom the industry is so scared of U. S. and even Canadian competition that it buys full-page ads to fight foreign cars as such. Some of these advertisements attempt the fear appeal. In one, a British couple are shown shamefacedly scuttling out of their golf club, as the wife says to her husband, "I always feel uneasy here. We seem to be the only people with a foreign car." In another, an extremely British sales manager in impeccable striped trousers brings blushing shame to the cheeks of one of his salesmen with the hint: "I don't think it looks well for one of our representatives to run a foreign car." Nevertheless Edward VIII has a new Canadian Buick which the horrified United Kingdom industry considers "foreign."

Delivered in Manhattan this week the Baby Austin, which is called by its makers the "Nippy Sports" model (see cut p. 33), sells for $745 with a special "super-engine" of 21 h. p., or for $695 with the standard Baby Austin engine which develops 17 h. p. (rated for tax purposes at 7.8 h. p.). In cheapest standard roadster form, the Austin is offered in Manhattan for $495, with 40 mi. per gal. promised. Efforts to manufacture Austins in the U. S. miserably failed (TIME, Sept. 2, 1935), because they obviously cannot be sold to the U. S. masses in competition with U. S. cars of similar price, but the importers last week hoped to do a brisk trade in "Nippy Sports" as novelties.

The Mercedes-Benz rear-engine car (see cut p. 33) is delivered in Manhattan for $2,175. Also on sale last week was the large Mercedes with supercharger and promised speed of 110 m.p.h., at $14,000. No French, Italian, Czechoslovak or Japanese car was offered last week, though European Motors Inc. specializes in importing on order and servicing anything, however exotic.* A new firm of interest to swanksters was J. S. Inskip, Inc., successors to defunct Rolls-Royce of America Inc. in importing the English article. On their floor was one of the extremely few Phantom III models yet manufactured by Rolls-Royce Ltd., one of the first of these 12-cylinder cars having gone to H.R.H. the Duke of Kent. This car (see cut) is priced in Manhattan at $17,000.

In London today Rolls-Royce Ltd. is considered an armament firm, chiefly engaged in turning out aircraft engines. In 30 years of Rolls-Royce production there have been only four models: the Silver Ghost (1906-25), the Phantom I (1925-29), the Phantom II (1929-35) and the Phantom III. Says the company in bringing out a 12-cylinder car for the first time: "Rolls-Royce have probably had more experience in the design and construction of 12-cylinder engines than any other firm in the world, for their first motor of this type was produced over 20 years ago.''/-

In the United Kingdom popular newspapers hire downy-lipped young peers to "review" new motor cars and the London Sunday Pictorial surpassed itself when it got the 6th Earl of Cottenham to write about the Phantom III. No fool, the Earl has worked in the aviation department of Vickers Ltd., the leading British armorers, but his description of the time he first drove a Phantom III has become a little classic of Mayfairese. Its title: The Well Behaved Great-Grandson of a Ghost.

"This particular car did not come into my hands as those of a motoring correspondent," wrote the Earl of Cottenham. "Indeed, in the strict sense of the term. I am not a professional motoring correspondent at all. . . .

"What other cars might claim to be in the same category as the Phantom III? Only five that I can recall offhand: the latest Hispano-Suiza, Horch, Mercedes-Benz, Packard, and the huge 'golden' type Bugatti."

Having taken the wheel of a Phantom III, in which he was shortly to do 93 m.p.h., Lord Cottenham continued, "I shrugged myself more comfortably into position behind the wheel and cast about little searching glances under the scuttle, as one does when familiarizing oneself with the instrument layout and control locations of a new model. . . . I saw the red telltale bulb glow on the ignition switchboard. . . . The big engine had hesitated-- 'hunted' we call it--for a second or two, whether because my cuff had caught the throttle lever and sharply shut it or whether, as Colonel Harker afterwards said, because of a fleeting, almost intangible carburation mood ... I do not know. At any rate there was no tremor, no noise; nothing but the sudden sight of the red bulb, a mute witness. But the engine had not stopped at all. and did not stop."

Having survived the Earl of Cottenham's cuff, the Phantom III carried him "stealing quietly uphill. . . . I found myself incoherently delighted like a child. . . . Attempting to avoid nothing, in fact, choosing if anything, the worst pieces of surface, I sailed down the middle of Bishop's Avenue hating the whole performance like poison, for I loathe so to treat a car . . . potholes a foot deep are everywhere. . . . Cars with orthodox springing, even of the best kind, shake the teeth in one's head as they pass over Bishop's Avenue. . . . Ghastly thuds sounded beneath the car as the road wheels rose and fell, but the classic shape of the well-known radiator in front of me scarcely pitched. And watching my rear passengers in the driving mirror, I never once saw them leave their seats; they were merely lifted smoothly up and down, and not much at that.

". . . It is almost certainly the easiest car in the world to handle. A tiny 5 ft. woman would find it far more amenable on a greasy road than any other car I know. Only once or twice, as we drew close to the Watford-Barnet fork, did I drop to third gear, unable to resist the feel of the claws of speed so gently, modestly garbed in their silken sheaths."

Finally, according to Lord Cottenham. ''with the relentless surge of a hurricane, the big car went. It neither leapt, shot, howled nor roared, as other cars are not inaccurately described as doing according to their kind. It just moved forward very fast indeed. At about 50, I changed to third. At about 70, I changed to top. . . . Thereafter, I did 93. . . . These are speedometer speeds, but the speedometer is one that satisfies Messrs. Rolls-Royce. . . . Farther on . . . I spoke a word of warning to my passengers and did a quick pull-up from 80 with both hands off the wheel. I was ready to grab and hold her, but the car stopped in a dead straight line as though snatched by a vast magnet. . . .

"An almost inaudible whine, fainter than a mosquito, rose to my ears from the back axle. Only harsh critics would have heard it.

"'Presumably that's another detail for attention,' I remarked as I lit my pipe.

" 'Yes,' replied the Colonel. 'It will not occur in the finished products.'

"I knew he did not exaggerate in the least. . . .

"What I have written is simply the proud tribute of a keen driver to a magnificent machine made by some of his fellow-countrymen. . . . Once again Britain's best remains the World's best."*

Other foreign cars on sale in Manhattan last week were British:

The Lagonda at $6,750, the A. C. or "Acedes" at $3,475 and the S. S. or &"Standard Swallow" at $2,860 are high-performance 6-cylinder sport and semi-sport cars.

The M. G., which is never called anything but an "M. G.,"/- is the supreme British bantam sport car and some of the firm's business is in supplying custom-made chassis to road-racing Britons who like to zip and roar. A minuscule M. G. has recently done 140 m.p.h. under test conditions in Germany. Those offered in Manhattan are a super-doodlebug at $1,435, promised to do 83 m.p.h., and a species of semi-sport sedan at $2,550 brought out this year in England for the first time by M. G.

* A new Japanese Datsun, which is an inferior copy of the Baby Austin, would cost $786 landed in San Francisco. /-For such airplanes as that of Alcock & Brown, first to fly the North Atlantic.

* Books by Lord Cottenham: Motoring Without Fears, Sicilian Circuit, All Out, Motoring Today and Tomorrow and Steering Wheel Papers. /-Its makers were originally the Morris Garages of Abingdon-on-Thames, are now incorporated as the M.G. Car Co. Ltd.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.