Local Entries Get a First and Honours at Oxford
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Lorry Driver of the Year AN outright win, the team prize and " two -class victories Went to drivers from Morris Motors, Ltd., in the Oxford. eliminating contest for the Lorry Driver of the' Year last Sunday, the 1471 entries being • largely' _local but including some from as far west as Bristol and as far east "as Ruislip. Perhaps " Oxford " is a slight misnomer, as the event started at CoWley and the road-test route, Which claithed few penalties, led to the 'works of Smiths 'Motor Accessories, .Ltd., at Witney, where the driving tests were held.
AlthOugh nobody tried the " wrongway-in " tactics for the loading-bay test as practised at SOuthend the week before, the excellently organized proceedings were far from dull. Many car transporters were entered and most of them brought their loads with them, thus turning the merely difficult into the virtually impossible. Whereas the majority had cars overhanging at the rear, to the detriment of their loading-bay attempts, T. Harding's B.R.S. Commer was carrying 12 Sprite bodies in side-byside racks and was allowed to tackle the width test, as a 9-ft. 6-in.-wide vehicle!
. As usual, the loading-bay test drew a crowd; performances among the smaller vehicles were surprisingly varied. Among those who made a splendid job of it were S. C. Roland with a Wall's Bedford van, J. Fletcher driving a tilt-covered-Bedford 4 x 4 and Class C winner W. Fosh, who lost only six points here with his Austin Premix concrete carrier, while A. H. Webb with a drop-side Bedford backed inexorably through markers, barriers, the lot. The only entrant to lose no marks in this test during the whole day (a record?) was E. W. McKenzie with a Bedford of Amey's Transport in Class D.
About i dozen competitors missed the bay altogether, reversing blindly into B48 'some bay of their own imagining. This happened to L. L. Coles with a B.R.S. A.E.C., but it cost him nothing as the . six other competitors in his class (El) also failed the test in one way or another, so that all had to be marked at 50 points more than the worst score in the next class (E2), and Coles finished second. All but, three entrants in E2
also failed. ,
The first to succeed among the eightwheelers:---after five successive tankers and flats had failed—was E. A. Ingram with an enormous Wall's van; he made it with only one forward shunt and finished an incredible I in. from the rear barrier_ Heavy losses on the other two tests kept him out of the prize list but W. Small with an A.E.C. tanker and R. Cheesemari with a six-wheeled Albion tipper clinched their first and second class positions by being the only otheritwo to succeed in the bay.
Of the artics, in Class Fl maximum marks were lost by 11 out of 15 competi
tors in this test, in F2 10 out of 11 drivers failed and in Class H all, entrants lost the maximum. Among the Latter failures, D. Benton with an artic tanker had the crowd laughing uproariously when he let his Scammell trickle backwards on tickover with the clutch engaged and spent most of the time leaning out of his 'nearside window to see how things were going, retreating into the cab from time to time to give the wheel a tug. All in vain—though he was second in his class.
But although it was, as usual, this loading-bay test which brought the most obvious shower of penalties, the marking sheets showed that in many cases far more points were lost subtly in the widthjudging test.
Most remarkable joint effort of the .day was by the three Austin and Morris drivers from J. Curtis and Sons, Ltd., in Class Fl where, against strong opposition, they took first three places with 186, 189 and 189 points respectively, the tie having to be resolved on driving-test points. Despite this scooping of the class pool they were beaten on aggregate points for the team prize by Morris Motors' " B "
team in Class D. H.B.C.