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Political Commentary
Page 104
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Wayward Fancy WHAT some people like to call masculine directness is an invariable feature of the Commercial Motor Shows. The stands make no attempt to be subtle, much less to indulge in the frivolities that are supposed to capture woman's wayward fancy. The assumption is either that only men will turn up or that any women who go will be prepared to put aside their femininity for the occasion.
The straightforward approach has its advantages. It reflects the honest workmanship and the careful inventiveness that the visitor to the 16th exhibition has taken almost for granted. The job of the vehicle manufacturer is to manufacture vehicles. He is evidently satisfied that his duty to the outside world is accomplished when he has put on show as many high-class models as his stand will accommodate.
As a result, the true impressiveness of the main part of this year's exhibition could best be gauged from the first floor, where the lines of the new models below could be seen and contrasted without too many distrac tions. On the ground floor one had at times the unpleasant feeling of being in the middle of an unusually overpowering traffic jam. There was not even space left to squeeze between some of the exhibits.
According to a recent report from the U.S.A., the vehicle manufacturers in that country pay a good deal of attention to the outside appearance of their products, and go so far as to employ women "colour stylists," as they are called. It seemed to me that there might
be something in this idea. Transport Man had too long had a monopoly. We might be on the threshold of the century, or at least the half-century, of Transport Woman. To test the theory, I sent Maggie to the show as an unpaid colour stylist.
Surprisingly Colourful
Her report began with the statement that the exhibition was surprisingly colourful, a triumph for the British paint makers. There would have been little difficulty in matching every ribbon in the average haberdashers. But of colour " styling " there NvE6 little evidence. The choice was obviously dictated by the preferences or the business requirements of the purchasers, in Maggie's opinion masculine to a man.
In particular, the municipal buses sported the various corporations' colours, but there was no evidence that these were picked for their soothing or aesthetic qualities. In Sheffield the buses are predominantly cream, in Leeds a shade of green, and elsewhere a bright red, and the preferences of the public cannot vary so widely from place to place. Civic pride inhibits the general use of whichever colour may be found more pleasing to the eye or even less liable to show the dirt. On the other hand, as Maggie reasonably pointed out, if all buses were painted the same colour, we should never be able to discover where we were.
After completing a tour of the show, Maggie .-eported, having tried them all, that there were some amazingly comfortable buses and coaches. She appreciated the thoughtfulness of the Christchurch (New Zealand) Transport Board, who had on show a
B22 single-decker city service bus with sufficient rubber-lined hooks attached to the front guard to take four perambulators. Although not suggesting that this heralded the dawn of the century of Transport Child—always attracted to the show in large numbers—Maggie thought that the device might well be more extensively adopted.
On the whole, the woman's-eye view passes over the technical details which, when all is said and done, represent the main purpose of the show. It is true that the buses proffered some delightful, if unexpected, destinations, such as Buenos Aires and Opawa, Trini dad, Effia Kuma and Finsbury Park. But the names afforded no more conviction than those of houses in some dreary suburb labelled Mon Repos, Shangri La and Out of this World.
To seek the islands of the blest, or whatever other private heavens there may be, one would never dream of starting from a place such as Earls Court. It is no doubt well suited to the purposes of an exhibition and ' may in times to come make a spectacular ruin for the gaping curiosity of the next civilization, but it provides no springboard for the imagination, and inspiration is muffled within its massive walls.
Charnel-house Atmosphere I begin each show full of optimism, but each time the atmosphere of the charnel-house defeats me. By the end of the week I am a broken man, alternating feverishly between one floor and the other, observing with sympathetic horror the desperate cheerfulness of the denizens, and pursued by what sound like the voices of the damned coming over the microphone. 'I am Jonah in the whale, having abandoned all hope of getting out.
Nevertheless, I am an inveterate haunter of exhibitions, and at rare times I have my reward. Visitors to the mechanical handling show at Olympia will remember that one of the stands displayed a live, if somewhat dejected, crane. That masterpiece of incongruity was, I thought, well worth the trouble involved, although the opinion of the bird itself may have been different. Such a flight of fancy at Earls Court would have been inconceivable, but even there one or two items had a frivolous appeal.
There was, for example, on the Dennis stand the Nairobi fire brigade's 100-ft. turntable ladder, described somewhat obscurely in the catalogue as having "fully automatic plumbing." I liked also the ScamrneIl sixwheeled Constructor. The designers of the display made a praiseworthy attempt to catch the vehicle on the hop. All the wheels were splayed at different angles on a carpet-sized piece of axle-breaking terrain strewn with boulders and thistles. And, to complete the picture, a charming touch of fantasy was embedded in the inscription: "This vehicle," it ran, "has been specifically designed for operating overseas."
The effect on the whole was gratifying. Time and again I saw visitors from abroad standing there fascinated . . . impressed—or maybe they were merely puzzled, not for the first time, at the mysterious British sense of humour.