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Now there's a happy New Year sight for sore eyes — and one of the brighter spots in our life of journalistic toil. The gorgeous blueeyed 36-25-36 blonde who is raising her glass to readers so cheerily is Miss Print 1974 — none other than Miss Janine Wigzell who visits CM's editorial offices as the representative of Newgate Press, the people who print most of the colour pages inside CM. Passing over such dreadful puns as "she seems the right type", which have been perpetrated by journalists who should know better. I will report that she is 22 years' old, had to face a very experienced panel ofjudges, and for a year will be on call to represent the printing and allied industries at trade fairs and exhibitions.
Nice work, Janine, and long may you stay top of the forme (an "in" printing joke. I fear). business, which mercifully tends to run on a much more even course than the hectic boom-and-bust-cycle of the car-world.
Power politics
Meanwhile, I gather that some engine manufacturers over here -and perhaps on the Continent too — are speculating on what Government intervention in British Leyland may mean in the power plant world. Leyland hasn't had the happiest of experience with its truck engines in recent years (though the corner seems to have been turned now) but it has engine production capacity to be reckoned with. If it was decided as a matter of politics and economics that Leyland ghould Make more engines for itself and others, the expansion plans of certain makers could rapidly be affected.
Apart from indigenous UK makers, both Cummins and General Motors have big investments in British power plant production. Cummins has had a good year, with well-filled order books, and is optimistic about '75 too. Cummins UK chief, Bob Campbell, told me last week that the company is putting its main 1975 effort into spares and service, so it is obviously consolidating in a war that will appeal to operators.
Wideawake Aussie
In case you've wondered. I can tell you that Bluey Tucker is still donning his bib down under and doing the Good Food bit for Australian truck drivers in the Leyland ads pages of transport magazines.
In a recent issue of Truck and Bus Transportation he was singing the praises of Caltex Dixi's Diner at Charmhaven (would you believe!) NSW where "the seats are up against the counter, the tucker isn't fancy but it's good and it's cheap". Reading on, I was fascinated to come on to this: "I always judge a roadhouse by the cups of coffee I get through during a meal. At Dixi's I had five."
Now there's a driver, I thought, who doesn't intend to go to sleep at the wheel. But there's perhaps a special need for all that coffee in the case of our Bluey. You'll see what I mean if I quote the homespun philosophy of our max-cap gourmet: "When you leave a place like that at night, after a good hot feed in good friendly company, you don't seem to notice the cold. It's just you with a full belly, your bum and your back wrapped up in the captain's chair, and the Big L pulling like a rhino over the last rise," See what I mean?