Commercial Motors in France.
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Trailers in Demand. No Petrol Shortage. American Carburetters Not Economical. Revival in Agrimotors.
From Our Paris Correspondent.
Two-and-a-half years of war have made radical changes in the commercial-motor situation of France. All factories are still absolutely forbidden to produce for private consumption, so. the transportation problems of the civilian population are being met partly by imported lorries and partly by the use of '0111 chassis which less than three years ago were waiting to be broken up. A curious situation is that some of the French manufacturers have become agents for American harries. Thus, M. Charron is selling Sterling trucks .and one of the Be Dion-Bouton directors is .offering to supply half-a-dozen different Yankee makes. Scores of touring-car manufacturers, unable to get lorries from their confreres, and having no facilities for building them themselves, are reduced to using Sterlings, Federals, G.M.O., Jeffery, and other cheap American trucks. It is a state of affairs which could not have been foreseen by the wildest imagination at the beginning of the war.
Old Touring-cars Utilized : More Lorries as Trailers.
Great ingenuity is displayed in the utilization of old touring-car chassis. Old Panhards, chain-driven De Dietrichs, Leon Bolles, Mors, and other oldestablished makes are now fitted with rough bodies and help to bring home the coals or. deliver supplies fromethe -central markets to suburban grocers and fruiterers. Under French law there are no restrictions regarding the use of trailers, and as the country around Paris is fairly level they are being used on an immense .scale. The first to use them were the aeroplane.Manufacturers, who now run up and down the VerSailles road at high speed with trailers 65 ft. in length. At 30 miles an hour thesestrailers do not hold to the road like a well-sprung touring car, but literally sweep from side to side. It is difficult to understand how accidents are avoided. There must be hundreds of munition firms making use of small two-wheel trailers attached behind an ordinary touring car, for the transportation of finished or partiallyfinished shells.
The latest scheme is to use horse lorries as trailers. In . some cases the wheels are changed to motorcar type, and fitted with pneumatic tires, the shafts arc taken off and the converted horse lorry attached behind the motor vehicle. This arrangement is common when used with a 1or 14-ton motor lorry, which, on the Continent is not really a van but a fast lorry on twin pneumatic tires. A number of haulage contractors have found an even more simple solution: an ordinary horse lorry, unchanged in any respect, is fastened by means of its shafts to the rear of a 21or 3i-ton motor lorry. In this way material which would otherwise remain unemployed is breught into service —for horses are rare—and there is no additional Cost to the transport agent.. One driver handles the two vehicles, there being nothing in the French law requiring the presence of an. attendant on towed vehicles ; or, if there is such a requirement, it is not enforced at the present time.
Never Any Real Shortage of Petrol.
In Paris conditions look more normal than they did a year ago by reason 'of the presence of motorbuses and a fairly large number of taxicabs. Certainly, the traffic is not by any means so dense as before the war, but except. in the outlying districts there is no real shortage of cabs and the two bus lines help to fill the streets. From time to time the supply of petrol for private use gives a little inquietude, but there has e30 never been any real shortage, and it has never been considered necessary to distribute the fuel in' an artificial manner, to ask owners not to motor for pleasure, or to call upon chauffeurs to exercise economy. Double taxes on touring cars, together with the high price of petrol, are quite sufficient to prevent extravagance. Paraffin as a fuel has received very little attention, and of coisrse alcohol and benzole are out of the question so long as explosives have to be made.'
If no pppcal has been made to the general public te economize petrol, the Army has been very, active in seeking to suppress waste. Very rigorous orders have Decently, and for the third time, been sent to all Commanding Officers informing them that motorcars must not be employed when the train or other public conveyance is available. Probably 70 per cent, of the high-powered cars which were need for carrying Officers from the central offices to various suburban factories have been withdrawn, and a certain number of two-cylinder Renal& taxicabs put in their place. The taxicabs, which are painted the regulation army grey, are driven by a military chauffeur, and certainly do as good service as the luxurious touring cars at only a fraction of the cost. It is practically impose sible new for officers to get the use of cars for journeys from Paris to Havre, Boulogne, Dieppe, Calais; or other places on the main lines.
Petrol Economy: American Carburetters Scrapped.
The technical section of the French liel.T., A.S.C., has given very close attention to the question of petrol consumption, and for months past has been preparing charts of average consumptions on various makes of lorries. It was found that practically all the American lorries were using very much more petrol than European vehicles. This arose very largely from the fact that American carburetters are adjustable and must be tuned up at very frequent interval's if satisfactory results are to be obtained. When this timing has to be done by the ordinary war-trained driver the results are deplorable. Thus, it was found that very many American convoys were consuming an average of 52 litres per 100 kilorn., while the Frenchtlorries averaged from 30 to 32. litres. The only American _ lorry which got down to the European level was the
• White, which, incidentally, has a European type of carburetter.
. It was therefore decided to scrap the American carburetter in favour of one of French make. After a public competition, Claudel secured the contract, and as a beginning all the Reos had their American carburetters taken off and CIaudels put in their place. Other makes have been treated in the same way. That this defect is not confined to the cheaper American lorries is shown by the fact that in their Iapt contract for Pierce-Arrows—recognized as one of the finest commercial motors in America—the French Army insisted that the Zenith carburetter should be fitted. When the Pierce-Arrow lorries were tuned up by the factory hands the results were quite as good as could be obtained by any European carburetter expert ; but the defect was that it was impossible to maintain this favourable consumption. unless the carburetter was adjusted from time to time by an experienced hand. • During the recent severe weather army motor lorries have undoubtedly saved many a person from death by starvation. Owing to the limited transport facilities coal merchants were unable to supply their customers, so. that in Paris alone there were thousands of people without an ounce of coal in the house. These were net poverty cases, for rich and poor were on exactly the same level, and the papers have recorded one case of an old woman freezing to death in her well-furnished apartment and with several hundred porinds in gold in her bureau. While the crisis
• was at its height the military authorities ordered 1800 army lorries to be placed at the disposal of the municipal authorities for the carrying of coal from the reserve depots to the dealers without stocks. This work was carried On day and night for several days, the coal being bought up and carried away in packages of a few pounds as soon as it was brought in.
Revival in Agrimotors ; a State Agrimotor School.
There is a wonderful revival at the present time in the use of motors for agricultural purposes. French farmers were already converted to agrimotors, and their only-regret at the present time is that they are unable to get any but American machines. In the Berry district, around Bourges, as, well as in the Sarthe district, steady work has been done for years by the local Automobile Clubs in educating farmers to the use of motors. On amarket day Le Mans, for instance, almost resembles "an American town by a rea
son of the number of its motor vehicles the scarcity of horses. Local committees all over the country are now giving attention to the training of maimed . soldiers to handle. agricultural motor machinery. A school with this object in view has been opened at Chartres, and another is about to open at Le Mans.
In addition, a State Agrirnotor School—probably the first of its kind in the world—has just been established and will be Working veryshortly at. Noisy-leGrand, a few miles from Paris. The farm of 321 acres, on which the school is to be established, has been given by Madame Gomel-Pujos, but the school itself is under the control of and supported by the State. Its objects are " the technical training of specialists required in agriculture for the handling of agricultural machinery and particularly agnmotors, In addition the school will be used for tests, demonstrations and applications concerning niechani
cal of the land." It is interesting to note that no person can be connected with the school, either on the teaching staff or as pupil, unless he is of French or Allied 'nationality. This seems to be the first active and effective boycott of enemy nations to have been taken in the motor industry. It is quite easy to forecast that soon after the return to peace conditions both benzoic and alcohol will come into extensive, if not complete, use for internalcombustion motors. For commercial-motor work the fuels are far from unknown, for all Paris taxicabs and a very large number of the motor lorries in France had used benzole for years prior to the outbreak of the war. Further, all army subsidy lorries had to run for seven days on a 50 per cent. mixture of benzole and alcohol, And this fuel was used for a long time by the Paris,General Omnibus Co. Indications are that alcohol will find an exclusive use for agrimotors and benzole for commercial motors and touring cars. There will be big supplies of both as soon as the • war stops, for it is officially admitted that at the present time the French are using 11 million gallons of alcohol per day for the making of explosives. This quantity can be increased in linge proportions, thanks to the French colonies. Further, the Government is pledged to cheap industrial alcohol and is only awaiting the end of the war to put its scheme into effect.
Complicated Taxi Tariff.
Paris, 27th January.—All commodities having increased in-price, it is not at all surprising that taxicab fares in the city of Paris should have followed the upward movement. The Prefect of Police., who is the authority in these matters, has just issued a circular in which he announces that, as an. exceptional measure, and during the period of the, war only. charges can be increased. The Paris taxicab tariffs have never been noted for their simplicity, and, indeed, have always been a source of complexity to strangers and foreigners ; thus it is doubtful if the general public will understand the exact manner in which they are being made to pay extra charges. The initial price remains at 75 centimes (about 7d.), but instead of being carried 984 yards for this amount, the taxicab will only run 820 yards before an extra penny is rung up. Further, this extra penny• will only carry a distance of 273 yards instead of 328 under the old scheme. _These rates are for what are known as the red flag taxicabs, which constitute a majority in Paris. There is a blue flag rate, but taxicabs working under it are very rare a also a white tariff, which is the most costly and is avoided by experienced Parisians. Horse cabs, which practically all use the taximeter, are also authorized th increase their prices. For the initial charge of 7d. they now carry' their passengers 918 yards instead of 1312 under the old rates. Taxicabs adopting the new rates will have red and white flags divided diagonally.
Red Tape and Officialdom..
One of the Paris evening papers is attaching considerable importance to an incident which tends to prove that officialdom is not confined to any one country. During the first week in January, while the river Seine was rising at an alarming rate, 600 motor tractors, valued altogether at £960,000 (the valuation appears to be on a very, liberal scale), were garaged on an island in the river, just outside Paris. The rising waters threatened to submerge the; entire island, but it was not until the last moment, when the task presented considerable difficulty, that the order was given for the tractors to be remoVed. Even then they had to be taken Away at the rate of only 30 per day. Fortunately, the flood was suc. ceeded by heavy frost and all danger averted. One of the most curious features of the incident is that there were two officers of the same name attached to the tractor depot, one of the officers being a. inotor agent and garage proprietor in civil life and the other a lace dealer. The latter was entrusted with the task of moving the tractors. Officialdom so often chooses the wrong man, even when, is here
i there s only one other competitor.