HAIL TO THEE, BLYTHE SPRITE, OR THE CASE OF THE CONVERTIBLE STEERING

An eagle-eyed reader in Hitchin draws our attention to two advertisements which appeared in a contemporary Weekly during May. In one of these, inserted by Mintex, a smiling young lady sits at the wheel of her left-hand-drive happily-smiling Austin-Healey Sprite, Reg. No. PBL 75. On the page opposite, in a Shell advertisement, what could be the ghost of Salvadori is seen going through the motions of fast cornering at the wheel of a right-hand-drive Austin-Healy Sprite, Reg. No. PBL 75.

Intrigued, we flicked the pages over and came upon the same young lady in a right-hand-drive Sprite, advertising Lockheed brakes. Apparently she had taken her number plates along with her, because this Sprite, too, is PBL 75. Or is it that when we examined Austin’s new poor man’s sports car they forgot to tell us that the steering is convertible, to left or right-hand-drive at will ? We really think it must be, for further research reveals that the young woman who cannot make up her mind on which side of a car she prefers to drive uses l.h.d. in conjunction with a Concentric water pump (those Continental roads ?) but gets over to r.h.d. when using B.P. Energol oil and Tecalemit equipment—at all events, we hope that is the solution, otherwise the Berkshire County Council will surely want her name and address for using the same Reg. number on two different cars. Come to that we wouldn’t mind her address ourselves ! Verily, verily, ’tis a case of hail to thee, blythe Sprite, and don’t give a damn about the numbers.

FOR CLEAN CARS

Romac Chrome Restorer paste has been specially prepared to clean chrome by removing rust, oxidisation and tarnish, besides, which it is claimed to retard further corrosion and it may he used for getting the tar from summer roads off wings and bodywork. It costs 1s. 11 d. per large tube. For cleaning and polishing the car itself we have beets using Johnson’s One-Step wax polish.

HEALTHY PRIVATE FLYING

Derby Aviation. Ltd., announce that for the first four months of this year 1,382 hours were flown, an increase of 351 hours on those achieved for the some period in 1957.

WATERTIGHT!

We have for a long time appreciated that the Volkswagen has an air-tight, and therefore dustproof, body. A cutting from The Winnipeg Tribune, sent to us by a reader in Ontario, neatly confirms this, by telling of a VW which fell into a river, presumably because a child released the handbrake. The car floated contentedly until an occupant wound down a window to hand a child to her rescuers, who had resorted to a boat !