Motor car

“ Think of the English roads and lanes, of the pretty girls and decent men one meets on horseback or in smart dogcarts, the dowagers in victorias, the crowds of cyclists, the occasional fine motor-car, knickerbockered men walking for the pleasure of exercise! Here, though one knows there are more motors than at home, one rarely comes across them out of towns; and as for ladies and gentlemen, or, indeed, any sort of people out solely for enjoyment, they're as rare as black opals. ”

“ I could imagine that more than half the fun of owning a motor car would lie in understanding the thing inside and out; and I said so.
"It's a little like controlling the elements," Jack answered. "Think of the difference in this machine, when it's asleep—cold and quiet, an engine mounted on a frame, a tank of water, a reservoir of cheap spirit, a pump, a radiator, a magnet, some geared wheels fitting together, a lever or two. My man twists a handle. On the instant the machine leaps into frenzied life. ”

“ Every motor-car owner, whether he can afford to keep a mechanic or not, should make a point of studying and thoroughly understanding his engine. It is not merely that this will save him trouble and emancipate him from the tyranny of the skilled mechanic, but it will very materially increase his pleasure in the pastime, for the study of the engine affords almost as keen enjoyment as the actual driving. ”

“ Few undertakings require more care and caution than the choice of a motor-car. Of the three or four hundred types and varieties now in existence, many are of no practical use, some are extremely complicated, not a few dangerous, and many more or less faulty in construction. The difficulty of the choice is increased by the fact that almost every enthusiast recommends the particular kind of carriage he himself possesses, and in addition every manufacturer claims, and possibly believes, that his is the only possible automobile. ”

“ The motor-car, when in the hands of a careful and experienced driver, is admittedly the safest form of vehicle on the road, the chief reason for this being the rapidity with which it can be stopped, even when travelling at high speeds, and also the ease with which under the same conditions it can be diverted from its course into the direction desired by the driver. ”

“ That it will be awakened I cannot doubt, when motor-cars become cheaper, when the prejudice against them has died out completely, and when men find, as they soon will, that it is more economical to keep a motor-car, not only than a carriage and pair, but than a horse and trap. ”

“ There are many motor-cars in use for the big shops and public offices; but these, being in no sense competitive in luxury, measure the ground by a speed less fatal, the drivers seem to desire to leave you whole, and suggest by their pace and bearing, some glimmering of humanity in their heart. ”

“ I never allow the mechanical portion of the motor-car to interfere with the interior of the carriage, a rule which experience has taught me to be very necessary. Your motor-car engineer as a rule gives but little heed to the carriage part of his vehicle; to him the engine is all in all, and he will not hesitate to thrust some of his oily belongings into the interior of one's vehicle unless such a rule as that which I have made is strictly laid down and sternly kept. ”

“ The motor-car triumphed. It grew rapidly more reliable, more silent, more pleasing to the eye; and to-day it glides in thousands along our roads, a pleasure to those who occupy it, a nuisance neither to pedestrians nor to other wheeled traffic; more under control when it is well driven, and more ready to stop quickly when required, than any horsed vehicle which it may have replaced. At one time the papers were full of such headlines as: "Another Motor-car Accident." ”

“ The fact that will assert itself directly we have a proper supply of easy, quick, and comfortable motor-cars available, is the fact just named—i.e. that we live on roads and do not live on railways. The circumstance that a motor-car can stop at the garden gate if we live by a highway, or drive up the carriage-drive and draw up level with the porch if we live within lodge-gates, and take a man direct to the door of his office, or of his friend, or wherever he wants to go to, is bound to make the motor-car beat the train for all short-distance work. ”

“ A good many people interested in motor-car matters are prone to the assumption that the motor-car question is a very simple one. To the horror of a good many of my enthusiastic friends I have always been bold enough to make two statements, first, that in unskilled hands the motor-car is very dangerous to its owner, its passengers, and others; and secondly, that the motor-car is as complicated as the horse. ”

“ The motor car has opened up the far reaches as nothing else has done.
Bigotry and prejudice are the fruits of ignorance. Where knowledge is they will not abide. In enabling people to acquire knowledge in their own way—the way that most impresses158 knowledge on them—the automobile is changing the thought and the habits of the denizens of the entire country. It is broadening the human mind, by giving it a solid foundation to work on. ”

“ The driver of the motor should then talk soothingly to the horse, and the groom should also encourage it as much as possible. The horse will follow with his eyes the movements of the car, and, as a rule, in a little while will allow it to be driven close by without any further signs of fear. The horse should then be harnessed and taken out on the road, the motor-car driven out to meet it, and sent a number of times past it until the animal takes little or no notice. ”

“ A boulder now and then or rough ledge cropping across the road would tilt the old lady at an uncomfortable angle. Heights and climbs over dangerous switchbacks had become commonplaces of travel by now, and we had gained confidence from learning the tremendous flexibility of which a motor car is capable. We were willing, without taking credit for extraordinary courage, to undertake almost any road wide enough for our tracks. People who confine their driving to perfect boulevards and city roads have no idea of the exhilarating game motoring really is. ”

“ If, however, it were possible for the householder to engage a light motor-car for himself and his wife and eldest daughter, a motor-brake for the children and servants, and a light steam-van for the luggage, bicycles, buckets and spades, and perambulators, which would load up, not against time, but quietly at the front and back doors, and unload at the hotel or lodgings, what a vast deal of fuss and worry would be saved! ”

“ MOTOR-CARS THE MOTOR OMNIBUS — RAILWAY MOTOR-CARS
The development of the motor-car has been phenomenal. Early in 1896 the only mechanically moved vehicles to be seen on our roads were the traction-engine, preceded by a man bearing a red flag, the steam-roller, and, in the towns, a few trams. To-day the motor is apparent everywhere, dodging through street traffic, or raising the dust of the country roads and lanes, or lumbering along with its load of merchandise at a steady gait.
As a purely speed machine the motor-car has practically reached its limit. With 100 h.p. ”

“ The hotter the sun the more agreeable the fanning of the air through which we pass, and the cold of winter, guarded against in proper fashion, carries with it its own exhilaration. To my mind the greatest pleasures and the greatest advantages derivable from the motor-car are the power of traversing large areas of the beautiful country in which it is our happiness to live. The use of motors in town is increasing and, doubtless, will greatly increase. ”

“ It was thus that the earlier motor-cars were greatly under-powered. The average man imagined that a one-horse engine was equal to one horse, that therefore a six-horse was equal to six horses, and that a carriage propelled by six horses was good enough for anyone. ”

“ Concurrently with its development into a reliable, silent, odourless and smokeless power-propelled vehicle, the motor-car gradually came into more general use. It no longer appealed only to a few but gained converts daily, and its final triumph came when it began seriously to displace the horsed vehicle. becoming the private carriage of the wealthier classes to be used on all occasions. ”

“ Automotive transportation may be considered to include all conveyance from one place to another by means of motor vehicles. A motor vehicle is one which carries within itself the source of mechanical power which propels it providing that source be not muscular. This definition would include the tractor, the road roller, the torpedo, and the locomotive, which are ordinarily excluded. For the purposes of this discussion an automobile or motor car may be considered as a self-propelled vehicle which transports a burden other than itself as a weight upon its own wheels. ”

“ Altogether the motorcar must revolutionise our social life in the country, and let us hope before long will lead to the bettering of our cross-country roads. The horse, poor beast, has never been able to tell us what he endures from bad roads, and the pace of a horsedrawn vehicle has been too slow for even the springs to suffer much; but if you get into a motor-car going five-and-twenty miles an hour over a road which you have hitherto deemed good, the engine and car will very soon tell you the difference between what the road surveyor's work has been and what it ought to be. ”

“ Yet that is what many people are expecting, forgetful of the fact that a motor-car is a horse and carriage in one, that its stable bill is of the smallest, that it ceases to consume oil or spirit immediately it is at rest, and that although its tyre bill, and accounts for occasional repairs, may be high, it is not subject to half the troubles that worry the owner of even the best-conducted horse stables. ”

“ We might have been taking an unconscious part in some vast moving picture production, or, more easily still, if we overlooked the fact of our own motor car, we could have supposed ourselves crossing the plains in the days of the caravans and stage coaches, when roads were trails, and bridges were not! ”

“ The motor, which the frenzied cupidity of manufacturers hurls like a juggernaut’s car upon the bewildered people and of which the idle and fashionable make a foolish though fatal elegance, will soon begin to perform its true function, and putting its strength at the service of the entire people, will behave like a docile, toiling monster. But in order that the motor may cease to be injurious and become beneficent we must build roads suited to its speed, roads which it cannot tear up with its ferocious tyres, and from which it will send no clouds of poisonous dust into human lungs. ”

“ Whether you consider the motor from the town or country station point of view, the fact that there are no horses to get tired, and that the motor will run, providing it is efficiently handled, for any hour or all hours during the twenty-four, makes it inevitable that every country house of any dimensions, and nearly every private carriage-owner in London, will have a motor-car of some sort or kind in coming years. ”

“ This fact of the date of the first sale of a gasoline motor car fixes clearly that the use of automobiles in the United States practically increased from one car to over three million, in less than twenty years. ”

“ The people who use cars ought, I think, to remember that it is not sufficient merely to obey the letter of the law, but that they ought to use their motor-cars as they would use any other portion of their property, no doubt for their own advantage and enjoyment, but also with due regard to the comfort and convenience of the rest of the community. ”

“ The girl watched them as they passed out of the hall, and presently she saw the “old-fashioned gentleman” pass the window, driving the oldest-fashioned car she had ever seen. It must have been one of the first motor-cars ever introduced into the country, a great, upstanding, cumbersome machine, that passed with a thunderous sound and at no great speed down the gravel drive out of sight. ”

“ At the present time probably not one per cent, of the owners of motor-cars have a suitable coach-house for this new class of vehicle. They are generally placed in sheds or outbuildings, more often damp than dry, or in coach-houses built for horse-drawn carriages. Few recognise that the motor-car is a far more delicate article than the horse-drawn carriage, most people having grown up in the common belief that anything to do with machinery is strong, and will bear knocking about. ”

“ The car is so singularly intelligent that you feel it is a friend, too kind-hearted and chivalrous a creature to let anything bad happen. Of course, about every ten minutes something almost happens, but that is invariably the fault of other people's cars. You dash up to the mouth of a cross-road which you couldn't possibly have seen, because it is subtly disguised as a clump of trees or a flowery knoll; and you discover its true identity only because another motor—a blundering brute of a motor—bursts out at fifty miles an hour in front of your nose. ”

“ Even on touring cars are often found engines developing 40 to 60 h.p., which force the car up steep hills at a pace nothing less than astonishing. In the future the motor car will revolutionize our modes of life to an extent comparable to the changes effected by the advent of the steam-engine. ”

“ Our “chauffeur” shook his head. “Not without wrecking the engine. There is nothing for it but to be towed to a machine shop.”
[19]
“And then?” I asked.
“That depends——” was his ambiguous answer, and we said nothing more.
Is there anything more exhilarating than an automobile running smoothly along? Is there anything more dispiriting than the same automobile unable to go? The bigger and heavier it is, the worse the situation seems to be. You might get out and push a little one, but a big car standing stonily silent portends something of the inexorability of Fate. ”