EXPLODED TIRE BELIEFS.
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The war has brougnt about many changes, and has accelerated many happenings which must otherwise certainly have been deferred. No alteration from pre-war conditions has been more complete in its effects than that which has been experienced in the solid-tire industry. It is now being brought hone to the user, and we predict that it will be increasingly realized by him as effluxion of time allows the correctness of our forecast to be seen, that credence for the ingrained belief of super-excellence in German tires must be abandoned. British tire-makers themselves do not seek to deny that the lead. ing German makes of tires are in every way good, both from the test points of manufacturing method and performance on the road. This is admitted to be due to the fortuitous circumstance of a definite • if small priority in point of time in favour of the Germans, who were the first to solve certain problems which had to be faced de nova by rubber-curers. The good luck which fell to the lot of the Germans in this regard led, as events proved, to an altogether-disproportionate popularity for their tires amongst users. Now is the opportunity to make amends. We feel that it is due to the British tire industry to draw the attention of owners and intending owners of commercial motors to the incontrovertible fact. that their old belief in the superiority of a Germanmade tire is now an exploded one. Never before, until the demand arose for rubber tires or large section, had those who are responsible for tire manufacture or any other class of commercial rubber-curing been called upon to deal in the processes of manufacture and vulcanizing with such large masses of rubber mixtures. Uniformity in the finished article was the object in view, and it was attained for some years only in varying degrees, and with indifferent success in many cases. We repeat, as one of the. two principal reasons for the large number of Gerinan-made tires upon British-owned vehicles at the date of ' the outbreak of hostilities, that the success of a few German makers in perfecting their methods a little • ahead of the leading English makers must be accepted as a piece of luck for the Germans. Tire-makers in Germany were helped by one other fundamental circumstance. Their representatives in the United Kingdom, in their keenness to secure orders, did not hesitate to supply tires to fit any rim-diameter of road-wheel, thereby incurring extraordinary expense at the works. It thus came about • that, before the Tire Committee of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders took up the subject of standard rim-diameters, there were upwards of 170 different diameters of rim, supplied from tire. makers in order to meet the requirements of British commercial-motor makers, and all this multiplicity of sizes in respect of a maximum variation of road-wheel diameter of less than one foot. Some British makers prejudiced their immediate trade by in part resisting the veliiele-maker's inordinate requests for odd and arbitrary sizes, although others were equally guilty with the Germans. We have to-day to put on record two leading considerations for attention at the hands of users. German tires are good, but they are not better than British tires. We, of course, do not thus endorse the claims of each and every make of tire from either source, but we wish to indicate that, so far as material, method of manufacture and life under working conditions go, approved makes from British factories are fully as good as approved makes from German factories. Belief in the super-tire from Germany is as genuinely exploded to-day as belief in the. German super-man. There are, as additional points of influence in favour of the British-made tire, all the usual range of arguments; which do not call for reiteration on our part, arising from the state of war into which we have been plunged against our will as a, nation, and the cost of which we are already paying, by toll of life as well as financial contribution, all of which features serve to bring home increasingly week by week the personal note of the call upon us to support British industries.
We ask, for the foregoing reasons, that the fetish of the German tire shall he abandoned. For the time being, other circumstances tend in the direction of its being abandoned at least temporarily, but nobody who honestly examines the claims of the respective tires can condemn the best examples from Germany for lack of quality. To-day, equally, nobody can give priority of place to the German tire on the score of quality, although that priority was undoubtedly earned and retained for a term—as to the length of which we, prefer not to write, seeing that it is a matter of some controversy—by one well-known Continental factory. There have for some length of time been British tires as good, if not better.