CONTINENTAL NOTES—continued from page 346.

up to something, especially when one of the chiefs of the racing department visited Silverstone to watch the International Trophy meeting. lie is normally far too busy to visit an English race meeting for a holiday, so one can only assume that Daintler-Benz A.G. are still interested to know how the opposition are getting on, and what they will be up against if they decide to re-enter the racing field. On the opposite side of Stuttgart, at Porsche, there is plenty of racing activity and the new cooling system for the Spyder is working well. This takes theform of an air-extractor driven by the exhaust, which draws -air across the finned and ducted heads and barrels, thus doing away with the enormous belt-driven cooling fan, which absorbs as much as 15 b.h.p. at maximum power. In its old form the flat-four Spyder engine develops about 145 b.h.p., so a banns of another 15 at the rear wheels by eliminating the cooling fan is well worth while. At the moment there is one drawback and that is the noise, for when it is at peak revs, the scream of the exhaust-driven extractor sounds rather like a Gloster Javelin taking off, and even Porsche are a little embarrassed about presenting it as a sports car ! If development goes ahead satisfactorily it might appear at Reims as a Formula II car, in a central-steering, single-seater Spyder.