T HERE have been moves to get
Page 32
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
the industry's two most prestigious competitions to co-operate in a single event. David lvison, chief executive of the Institute of the Road 'Transport Engineers, which supplies marshals to both the Brewery Transport Advisory Committee fuel economy trials and the Lorry Driver of the Year competition, suggested that both organisations might derive mutual benefit by getting together.
BTAC turned the idea down on practical grounds as the fuel trial operates on a very tight schedule and is not geared to accommodate large crowds of spectators. That's a pity; the LDoY could do with some new attraction now that it has dissociated itself from truck racing, which did not tit the competition's safety image.
LIBERAL leader David Steel was spotted last week by a CA,/ man in Edinburgh Airport's departure lounge. Both were waiting for the Shuttle — I beg your pardon, British Airways, the Super Shuttle — flight to Heathrow and Steel appeared to be engrossed in the current issue of What Car magazine. No doubt he was formulating the Liberals' transport policy.
He probably had sonic travel brochures lined up for the return trip so that he could thrash out a foreign policy.
ISEE that General Motors has bought a controlling interest in Lotus, the sports car manufacturer, on the grounds that GM ". .. is Lotus's largest single customer for engineering consultancy services . . . (according to bankers Morgan Grenfell).
Does this mean that GM's Bedford division will suddenly sprout a range of Tupperware-bodied, high-speed delivery vans with race-bred suspension and what I believe are referred to in those circles as -turbo decals"? Or, given the Lotus penchant for giving vehicles names beginning with "E" and ending in —1". (Esprit, Eclat etc), are we going to see a TM replacement called
Elephant, or a special TL-based gullyemptier called Effluent, an export model called Egypt, or even a new tipper just called the Eight?
IF ()NE manufacturer mentions the products of another, it is normally to damn rather than to praise. This year, however, Daimler-Benz has assumed the responsibility of publicising not only its own centenary, but also that of the motor car in general — arguing (with some justification) that they are one and the same anyway.
So the multi-million Deutschmark extravaganza which D-B mounted last week as its official birthday party (revolving stages, international sporting and cultural stars, all telecast live in front of an invited audience of 4,0(H), including the President of West Germany, heads of GM, Toyota, etc) naturally featured other people's vehicles as well as those proudly bearing the threepointed star. But even D-B at its most altruistic had not prepared the I lawk for the surprise he received when the first vehicle to appear in a glittering parade (supported by a troupe of actors in the appropriate national dress) was — Czechoslovakia's own Skoda. It was followed by a Seat from Spain, and a host of other vehicles From around the world, of which the very last, sportingly, was 1)B's own Mercedes-Benz. /N A BID to cut down on hospital costs of road accident victims, new Transport Minister Peter Bottomley has joined forces with Health Minister Norman Fowler, and decreed that every new driver must be fitted with an all-over plaster cast before venturing onto the road.
Minor bumps and scrapes will now be able to be dealt with, as simple roadside repairs using plaster-ofparis, by any competent kindergarten graduate. As with all such health-and-safety related moves, the private medical seetor has leapt in with up-market .forms of the basic specified treatment, in this case a designer cast by Welsh/German sculptor Dai Al. Lerbenz