Ford with a difference
Introducing the Taunus 17M — A rugged, stylish, well-planned car of character, from the Cologne factory Over Whitson we covered -a big mileage in an eye-catching Ford Taunus 17M de luxe…
THE M.C.C. LONDON—LANDS END TRIAL.
Giant Entry Covers Course with Minimum of Trouble.
yEAR after year the classic M.C.C. events seem to become easier and easier. The same hills are included but cars and motorcycles improve steadily in performance and reliability, while for the most part the same drivers compete again and again. Given fine weather, therefore, these runs tend to become a kind of enjoyable and rather prolonged social run, and
any failures can be attributed to bad luck, and perhaps in the case of a few novices to bad driving.
Under the circumstances the press-man has a difficult task to produce a report that is anything except a catalogue of successful climbs of the hills. The alternative is for the pressman to compete himself, but even reports of this nature become wearisome to the reader (and expensive to the writer).
The Lands End hills are undoubtedly fine tests of the motor vehicle, but as the latter are really such wonderful creations for the most part that even the worst hill— Beggars Roost—could do little more than stop a few of the ” midgets ” which owing to a lack of sufficient ” run ” were slightly underpowered. Generally speaking, among the cars, the best showing on the hills was made by drivers of Morris and M.G. Sports, Frazer Nash, Salmson, Riley, and Trojan, while several makes with fewer entries put up excellent performances, in some cases 100% gold medals.
Motorcycles experienced practically no difficulty on any of the hills except a few unfortunates who found that some slight derangement had taken the ” edge ” off their motors, but special mention must be made of the brilliant climbs of “The Roost” by T. G. Meeten (172 c.c. Francis Barnett and sidecar) and W. Bray (249 c.c. Dunelt and sidecar). Here and there among the competing vehicles the usual gadgets and startling models were to be seen, among the former we noticed a series of A.O.F.B. emblems and symbols towering above the nose of Calvert’s Scott sidecar while B. B. F. Russell’s saloon aero Morgan deserves mention among the latter.