WANTED! A TESTING GROUND AT WEMBLEY.
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"The Inspector" Suggests the Desirability of Including Adequate Facilities for Testing all Kinds of Motor Vehicles in Connection with Future Great Motor Shows.
IN 1923—or 1924.—(if the British Empire Exhibition of 1923 cannot be cleared away by the end of October of that year)—all being well and providing present plans do not go astray, we shall, those of us who survive the present rather drastic condition of affairs, be attending our motor shows at the Great Imperial Exhibition at Wembley Park, the new location which bids fair to become a permanent site for all exhibitions of this kind. It is to be hoped that wise counsels will prevail and that the types of buildings which are put up on this occasion will be designed with a view not only to securing the utmost possible artistic effect, but that they will also adequately serve, from the point of view of accommodation, the needs of great exhibitions, amongst which not the least notable are those promoted yearly by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
We have all become accustomed to Olympia as the annual venue, but it cannot be denied that the splitting up of the display in recent years between October and November and, again, between Olympia and the White City has very many grave objections. ' It cannot possibly be admitted that such a state of affairs could be permitted to continue indefinitely. We must have a building, or group of buildings, large -enough and properly situated for the accommodation of the whole of the displays of any branch of our industry. Wembley seems an ideal site, and it can safely be left to the very enterprising directorate of the Metropolitan Railway to ensure that the already satisfactory rail facilities in that direction are extended and developed adequately to meet the periodic huge increases in traffic that will inevitably follow the establishment of these permanent exhibition buildings.
Those who have been over to Berlin, during the recent show, have come back full of enthusiasm for the Germans' wiseeDrovision of a-track in proximity to the show. The writer wants to suggest that, before the plans. for the Wembley buildings are finally approved. very. full consideration should be given to the possibility of embodying in the whole scheme a track that could be used, at any rate, for demonstrations. It is a matter for argument as to whether such a track should be constructed on racing lines, and whether it should be designed to promote the ordinary racing .fixtures so beloved of the amateur and of the technical Press, although such an expense to the manufacturer, or whether it would not be wiser to concentrate on the provision of a track or testing ground which shall be used almost entirely to give facilities for the testing and trying out of the ordinary
models, commercial and otherwise. .
It seems to the writer that not sufficient encouragement has been given in the past .in connection with Olympia shows to facilitate the giving of demonstrations to wouldsbe customers. Those who are responsible for Olympia appear to have rather frowned on such an extension of the exhibition facilities, and yet it is a perfectly sound and commonsense arrangement to provide means ready at hand whereby a prospective owner who has listened patiently to all the florid exhortations of the enthusiastic salesman shall, with the minimum of trouble to himself, be able to put the machine be is considering to ' a series of more or less exhaustive trials there and then. It has always been a puzzle to many of us as to how it is 'that so many sales are actually effected at an exhibition without any test
being part of the purehaee negotiations. It seems so. much like buying a pig in a poke, with the exception, of course, of vehicles which have behind them long records of very successful operation.
If this idea be considered there is no. real reason why those who have the interests of the Brookla,nds track at heart should feel any qualms as to the possibility of a counter-attraction at Wembley.
The new track should be designed in such a way that very exhaustive tests, not only of speed—in fact that should be one Of the last -considerations— but of petrol • consumption, hill-climbing, gear changing, braking,' turning circles, and any and every test, in short, that can be required by the purchaser either of a touring car or of one -of the very many types of commercial motor vehicle, may be carried out on the spot. The hill-climbing test at Brooklands is all right in its way, and has proved popular in a very limited sense, but it is not a test of which the public knows very much. At Wembley there should be provided very carefully engineered gradients which the ordinary metropolitan buyer or the visitor to international shows should regard as the proper place on which to try the machine of which he is considering the purchase. There should be several such hills, with several very carefully calculated ranges of gradients, combined, if possible, with bends and turns on the gradients, which would approximate more or less to conditions that are likely to he encountered on the • open road.
Then again it should be easy enough to find facilities for testing the capacity of a machine, to reverse in congested conditions, to get round sharp corners, to back up blind entries and suchlike. Tests for brakes should also be similarly provided. for ; in short, the whole of the idea of the suggested track at Wembley international Exhibition site should be to provide facilities for the buyer to test the actual machine. The question of racing, as such, might very well be left to Brooklands.
It may be argued, perhaps, that, in connection with the modern design of the commercial motor vehicle, there has been some reflection of improvements decided upon as the result of all the different speed tests, but, at first hand, such instances cannot be recalled.
One •hears quite a lot of the wonderful effect of horse-racing on the breed of the horse. As to exactly what it has had to do with the development of the Olydesdale, the writer is very badly informed. Now that the demand for the horse is slatkeningtosuch an extraordinary extent, it is hardly to be supposed that the racecourse will be a less popular institution with the race-goer. Some other excuse will have to be found for the national need for racing and all its ramifications.
What is wanted in the motor industry is a test track, a very much larger and much more carefully engineered and conceived edition of the kind of track with which so many of our foremost works in this country and abroad have nowadays provided themselves. Additional interest would be given to amotor show, whether for touring cars or commercial vehicles, if part of the actual sales work consisted of demonstrating the capacity of a machine on the track and the salesman's work was no longer limited as hitherto to that of an over-the-counter discussion.