Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1926-08-29

stressed in national automobile
the hoop skirt, as no longer appe
ing through the artistic advertis
one of the most alluring prodr
manufacturers now paving for
his car is the fastest stock car
What is responsible for this
diately that the public that bou
binding speed gradually is getti
them doing IS miles an hour on
too easily by other machines tina
Others. perhaps, looking deeper into
the subject. declare it is because the
vast majority of automobile owners
do not care for speed of this kind.
even if a car were capable of achiev.
ing such a pace. AS one observer
tersely puts it:
What IL a car will do IS miles an
hour? Nothing above 60 could pos
s.bly count with the rational driver,
and the only place that 10 amounts
to anything is in the Traffic Court. AS
matter of fact, the Traffic Court is
about the only place a lot of these
speedy cars will reach their advertised
capacity. as ony one can determine by
some simple mathematics.
Traffic conditions. even on the so.
called open highway" are such to-
day that 1t takes something that far
tranScendS the average mOrtals cour-
age to let even the slower cars touch
their top speeds. Some drivers. of
course, do open 'em wide" but a
great many of this type 10 not out
machine driven at top speed contin.
ually Is noted for its longevity.
1t is worthy of consideration that
during the period when speed was
stressed as the most valuable char.
acteristic of the automobile. there was
no relaxing of the regulations which
specified that the motorist who drove
above so miles an hour was a dis
tinct menace to society. In many
States 80 miles an hour was the maxi
mum speed and the average today is
approximately 35 miles.
These seemingly arbitrary limits
were fixed as being the highest at
which one could drive with degree
of safety to Onself or to others. They
represented the consensus among
safety experts. officials and lay OBJ
servers. They may have been arbi-
trary, they may even have been
wrong-but there they stood for the
man who had a car that ran like a
States Curb Speeding.
OF course. there always has been
a measure of flexibility in State high
way speed limits. For the man who
was in hurry it was and still is pos
sihle to reach As or even so without
being too conspicuous should a high
way patrol officer happen to glance in
ones direction. Fifty. however. rep
resents approximately the ultimate
at which a motor cycle officer could
he expected to wink, even in his most
benign mood.
The open" highway daily is grow
ing less open. BY the same token, it
is less safe for the driver who is out
tn see how much faster the ads were
than his car really is. AS the high
way becomes more heavily Travelled 1t
Is patent that everything car is
capable of doing above so miles an
hour is gong to be more and more
useless. This is the handwriting on
motordom's wall and perhaps its mes
sage is the one that the manufacturer
has decided to heed.
II is notable that during the months
when winged Mercurys and loin-
clothed Hermes were pictured in the
ads running hopeless races against
siX-cylnder BlahS and four-cylinder
Blatts, the fine, expensive cars Of
American make We're saying moth
ing of the speeds that lay in their
marvellous power plants. Was il be
cause these cars We're incapable of
achieving the speeds that their less
expensive cohorts claimed" Scarcely.
The real student Of the automobile
knows the answer lay in the fact that
It wasn't necessary to proclaim their
prowess In that field.
While some of the smaller car max
ers were proclaiming Justify that
theirs was the machine for the man
who wanted speed, the makers of
what is generally regarded as the best
In American automobiles were using
their advertising to sell what seems
TO be the chief characteristic of the
Acknowledgment. flexible. comfort
able, luxurious. but above all sound
the time. but they believed speed to
be secondary.
Makers Were Sincere.
In all fairness to the makers OF the
speedy cars. il must he said that their
stressine of this point was from a
point of view that was almost entirely
lost upon the reader of the advertis-
ing. They wanted to let the world
know that their products were sub
stantial. mechanically so sound that
they would stand up under the most
gruellnC Of all tests-speed.
The buyers of these cars and. unfor-
tunately In too many cases. the re-
tailers. didn't read between the lines.
They saw merely something that
would show up on the m. phi. side of
the Speedometer instead Of something
that would be revealed in the appear
ance and performance of the machine
at the conclusion of such tests as the
manufacturer limited could be given
safely to his product over long
period.
The result seemed to be a false i'm
preston quite generally. Too many