Longevity

Sir,
After close scrutiny of the photograph of the Rolls-Royce marriage, may I express the sincere hope that any B.M.C.-Rolls vehicle in the future will have as much road use and as long a life as the “Rolls-Riley” evidently had.

M. B. Stevens.
Chislehurst.

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Sir,
It is a sad commentary on the experience of the present-day British motor-car owner that Mr. Arnold should find it worthy of note that his car, barely two years old, has been “driven hard” for 27,900 miles without major trouble.

S. J. Laredo.
Worcester Park.

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Sir,
I have a Morris Mini-Minor which is now in its forty-seven thousandth mile. I was therefore rather interested to see your comments on your car in last month’s “My Year’s Motoring.” Contrary to your experience I did not find it any worse for wear after 35,000 miles, and in fact after an extra 10,000 miles the car seems to go even better than ever.

The engine in particular has been very good, and has never let me down, except when water got into the distributor during its early life. Even now it runs extremely sweetly and is able to propel the car beyond 70 m.p.h. and has never dropped below 40 m.p.g. The only fly in the ointment with the power unit being the gearbox, of which I have had three, although the last one was fitted over 30,000 miles ago. However, I understand that the latest design of gearbox is a great improvement, and a long overdue one.

I suppose that the outstanding feature of the car is the suspension, which has never caused any trouble other than for two replacement shock-absorbers. During the recent bad weather I frequently had cause to thank B.M.C. for their design when I was able to keep up 65 m.p.h. even though much larger cars were having difficulty in keeping up 35 m.p.h.

Before finishing I must add that the car has been far from perfect, but at today’s mileage it has settled down to an extremely reliable and cheap form of transport on which nothing has broken or failed completely, and which uses oil at the rate of about 4,000 m.p.g. which seems to show that it is far from worn out, and I shall therefore have no hesitation in choosing a Morris 1100 as my next form of transportation, in which I hope to enjoy a further 50,000 odd miles of interesting driving.

B. T. Gunn.
Birstall.