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Price Reduction:.

10th August 1920
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Page 1, 10th August 1920 — Price Reduction:.
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

THE PUBLICITY which has been, given by the daily Press to the cut in Ford prices, which we were able to announce last week, has led to a great deal of speculation as to the _causes, and possible effect on the motor industry; of such a policy.

So far as the .heavy-vehicle world is concerned, manufacturers are hardly likely to be perturbed, nor is the all-round drop_ in prices, which has been foreshadowed in some quarters, likely to come about. .

The Ford products occupy, in the commercial. vehicle world, a position of their own, and-meet an un-disputed and peculiar demand, In consequence, • the reduced prices will undoubtedly be welcomed by very many people, who find in the Ford van and • one-ton truck, vehicles which fill an almost unique, and particularly useful role, in certain branches of road transportation.

It is generally believed that the prime cause Of the reduction in the price of the car has been on account of the new taxation, which falls heavily upon this particular vehicle, but, so far as the van and truck are concerned, this can hardly be the reason. As a. matter of fan?, the price reduction of the Ford has been a bogey which has long, haunted the precincts of the motor trade. It was often predicted before the war, when it was always rumoured. that it lay in the power of the great exponents of quantity production to cut their prices at any time most convenient to themselves. The time has now apparently arrived.

This occurrence is, however, not without its uses in emphasizing once more the price-reducing possibilities of really large-scale production, even when the cost of labour is inordinately high. It will be remembered that some little time ago a British concern announced a price reduction solely on account of the economies resulting from the magnitude of its operation.

Both incidents point the way to ultimate competitive success in motor-vehicle production.

Resilient Roads.

ACONSIDERABLE AMOUNT of interest has lately been manifested in the experiment, which is in progress, of surfacing a portion of the Borough,High Street with rubber slabs, and in consequence a certain number of people, whose imagination outruns their common sense, have indulged in wild flights of fancy, in regard to the possibility of rubber-surfaced roads becoming general, at some time in the future. While, for certain purposes, such as the silencing of heavy traffic in the vicinity, of hotels and such like places, rubber fulfils, at a considerable cost, a very useful purpose, we think it quite unlikely that its use will ever extend in more general application to road surfaces.

Apart altogether from the. point of view of cost, it is, to our mind, very doubtful whether a great nieasure of resilience is desirable in a road surface, especially one intended for heavy traffic. Running a rubber-tyred. Vehicle on a non-resilient road is an entirely different matter from running a non-resilient wheeled vehicle on a rubber road. In the former case, while ensuring immunity from shock, and comparative silence in running, the rubber tyre also enables small obstacles to be " swallowed," and thus to be surmounted with but a small expenditure of power; when a heavy vehicle is run on a rubber road its wheels are bound to sink iii.a certain amount, and to squeeze up, in front of them, waves of material, which impose a definite and constant resistance to the progress of the vehicle.

The Question of Silence.

S0 FAR as the noise "Of wheeled traffic is concerned, a resilient road would not help matters very much. Most of the noise from selfpropelled vehicles is traceable to the mechanism and bodywork of the machine, rather than to that of wheeled contact, and it is in improvement of the vehicles themselves that silence is most likely to he secured.

In this connection, the pneumatic tyre will help to a great extent, but in any case it is only a contributory factor.

But the chief argument against a rubber road is, in our opinion, that of waste of material. Rubber, in the form of tyres, is always in use so long as the vehicle is running. On a road, however (the extent depending upon the volume of traffic which it carries), a large portion of the surface is at atiy given time fulfilling no useful purpose, and by the very nature of the vehicles which run upon it, certain portions must always bear the brunt of the wear.

Rubber being a perishable substance, it is obvious that, looking 'at the matter from a broad point of view, it is better to wear it out in the form of tyres than to let it rot away on a road surface.

The experiment referred to is hardly likely to provide a solution of the road surface problem. •

THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR Six-wheelers and Road Trains.

LAST WEEK we described at some length various types of six-wheeled vehicle, and endeavoured to show the attempts which had been 'made in various designs to overcome the difficulties inherent to the_ problem of mounting a vehicle on six wheels, and of ensuring at the same time that each wheel should bear its reasonable share of the load, despite inequalities of the road surface.

Steeling difficulties also come into the problem, -... and these have been most successfully overcome •by making the vehicle in two parts connected together by a turn-table. The behaviour of the rear portion is then very similar to that of a closely coupled trailer, but it differs intrinsically from the trailer, inasmuch as the load is mainly carried above the centre axle, which is power-driven, with the result that the greater the load, the better the adhesion of the driving axle.

Thus, the rear portion may be regarded not as a trailer, but as a detachable body, provided with a couple of extra wheels to support its after end. Consequently, the whole machine is licensed as a sixwheeled vehicle, and is nat restricted in respect of speed, as a tractor and trailer would be. Legally, it is possible to build such a vehicle to carry upwards of 7i tons at 12 miles an hour on solid rubber tyres, and it is clear that this exceptional ability must be of great value, unless serious drawbacks, certainly not to be anticipated, appear. The licensing of these vehicles r4opens the whole question of trailers, and carriers which are not really trailers. The speed limit when a trailer is attached, is made very low, principally because of the loose connection between the trailer and the power vehicle, and the fact that the load on the trailer does not serve to improve the adhesion of the power-driven wheels. Up to the present nothing has been clone to give legal advantages to combinations in which this latter disadvantage is overcome. Road trains have been designed in which the following vehicles have their wheels positively driven either by electrical or mechanical means. There are distinct possibilities in the road train for the carriage of heavy loads, and it is most desirable that, when the law is revised, something Should be done to encourage the development of the road train, as against the use of the ordinary type of trailer.

In the road train the load is distributed over two

or more pairs of driving wheels. It is not necessary that the axle weight of any one pair of wheels shall be very great, but still the aggregate load may be far in excess of anything that is yet possible to a vehicle licensed as a heavy motorcar. Presumably, under the new regulations, the Minister of Transport will be given power to allow the use of the roads to vehicles of exceptional design, even though these do not comply strictly with the letter of the law, or rather, of the regulations imposed for the time being. The possibility of getting the approvalof the Minister would be satisfactory up to a point, but there is nothing certain about it and, therefore, it does not amount to a sufficient encouragement of an obviously desirable development.

Service.

THE formation of a Motor Service Society is a promising sign of the times. In thiii country we have lagged long enough behind America in our conception of what the term "service" should really mean.

The society referred to has been formed with the idea of bettering the service rendered to motor vehicle owners. It will enable service managers to meet and to axohange ideas. Much that will be of benefit to owners of all classes of motor vehicles should come out of it.

The "service" manager's job is a comparatively, new one on this side of the Atlantic, and his functions are not, in all cases, yet defined as clearly as they might be. Nevertheless, his arrival gives evidence of the abandonment of a tendency that was at one time too frequently apparent, viz., that of losing interest in a vehicle once it had left the place where it was made.

The American sometimes refers to, what he calls, "keeping the product sold." That, largely, is the art of service. The manufacturer can no longer disclaim parental responsibility for the vehicles he has produced. He must keep in. close touch with them throughout their useful life, and see that they maintain the reputation of Ma house, and preperly fulfil the functions for whioh they have been sold.

Thus he must keep in contact with their owners,• either through his agents or direct. To enable him to do so, he requires a liaison officer: That is not the least of the useful functions they service manager should fulfil now that efficient service is recognized as an essential of successful business.

Tags

Organisations: Motor Service Society
Locations: Borough

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