SPORTING CARS ON TESTING

SPORTING CARS ON TEST. THE SENECHAL TYPE T.S.3. By RICHARD TWELVETREES.

THE name of Senechal is famous throughout Prance in connection with racing events, the car being designed by the famous racing motorist, and is now constructed in the factories of Messrs. Chenard 8r Walcker, at Gennevilliers, near Paris, where the equipment is of the most modern character.

The car forming the subject of these notes was placed at my disposal by The Automobile Service Co., Ltd., of Great Portland Street, which firm are the sole concessionnaires for Great Britain, and, as usual, was submitted to a very severe road test, during which some interesting things were discovered. As it was suggested that this car should be used in connection with our report on the Victory Cup Trial,

we began by trying it out for ground clearance, opportunities for which were afforded on a suburban roadway, as shown in the illustration reproduced on page 321. Here, the clearance, though apparently slight, proved adequate to allow a free passage over the rough ground and the suspension system was equally satisfactory. We then took the car out to Dorking, and on going up to Leith Hill discovered a rather perplexing failure of the petrol supply. At first the rubber pipe connecting the petrol tank to the carburettor was suspected, but after removing this several times, there was no sign of any obstruction. The car would do all that was required of it on the level and on moderate gradients, but as soon as any hill was encountered, the petrol

would not feed fast enough to keep the engine running at its full rate of revs.

The defect referred to above interfered with our timed test on the Zig-Zag at Box Hill (see Fig. 3), and on trying again one of the rear tyres gave out, so altogether we were rather unlucky at first. It was discovered subsequently that the tube bad been nipped between the edges of the tyre and the fast cornering resulted in a split in the tube.

Having, therefore, lost our spare tyre, we decided not to run further risks by fast cornering and made our way to Leith Hill, stopping at the hotel at the top of the road to get the tank filled right up before attempting the ascent of the steep lane leading up to the Tower.

Here the Senechal quite made up for previous misdeeds by climbing the steep gradient in marvellous style, actually carrying the driver, an observer and the photographer with his outfit over the top. We had not expected a performance of this kind, so had to allow the car to run down again for the photographer to take up his position, from which the picture shown above was taken. When running down the hill backwards, the brakes were found to be very effective and a stop-and-restart was made on a very steep part, though, as we found later, the engine was not tuned to give the best results when pulling at low speeds. On the comparatively dry, but loose earth, there was little sign of wheel spin and