Letters from Readers, September 1947

Sir,
Tomorrow I leave my unit for demob. I would like to take this opportunity of thanking you sincerely for your generosity over the last two years. The periodicals which you have so kindly sent have appeared regularly in our reading rooms, and have been well read by the majority of the Regiment. It is difficult to appreciate how necessary this link with home is for those who, stationed in a foreign and ruing country, are deprived of the comforts of their home and local life in England.I think, too that the wide selection of periodicals which can now be read here have aroused new interests amongst the men of the Regiment, and I, for my part, am confident that, as they return to civilian life and settle down to their daily routine, they will recall these new interests and hobbies and seek to pursue them at home. I hope that when this happens they will remember your periodicals and wish to read them again.
I am, Yours, etc.,
B. Price (Sgt.).
The Library,
29 Fd. Regt. R.A., B.A.O.R.

Sir,
Though I have been an enthusiastic reader of Motor Sport since the cream jacket days, this is the first occasion upon which I have attempted to express my views on its pages. However, I am inspired on this instance by a desire to support you most whole-heartedly in you true representation of the speeds of cars under road test. I note, from the May issue, that you have received criticism, but I do not think that you need have any qualms. A weekly contemporary, with its speedometer-checking instrument, is no doubt causing the manufacturers just as much embarrasment! Besides, you show, (as evidence, the Allard’s 80.4 m.p.h.) that those that can do it, still do! I say, keep up the good work; it is a tonic.

Further, I feel that this might be an excellent moment (during the near-stagnation of new car productions for the home market) for the opening, through the medium of Motor Sport, of a campaign to demand accurate speedometers. The farce of the “optimistic” speedometer has made the comparison of real motor cars with “the others” completely ridiculours. People who would probably be paralysed with fright at an honest “sixty,” talk glibly of their family “eights” and “nines” that will top “seventy.” No wonder they cannot see the necessity of spending the extra on an H.R.G.! It is absurd to believe that instrument manufacturers who helped to give us “blind” flying are unable to manufacture an accurate car speedometer, and the present position has the appearance of something very little short of conscious deception on the part of car manufacturers who not only fit but presumably specify an incorrect instrument. Obviously a mutual agreement to “Cut it out” all round would stop the nonsense and hurt nobody.

My German D.K.W. has a speedometer which has often been suspected of being hopelessly slow; but I must admit that I myself have sometimes wondered about it. The car can maintain an amazingly high average speed (relative to maximum speed) without apprently doing much more than 40. m.p.h., and is seldom overtaken by the normal run of small cars. But the truth is probably that the instrument is accurate, amongst hundreds that are fast, and that 40 m.p.h. is still fairly adequate motoring.

Congratulations on an excellent magazine that can be read from cover to cover.
I am, Yours, etc.,
Cedric S. Reid.
Newcastle-on-Tyne