Bond drives again

One of those queer-looking Bond Bug tricycles has completed a three-Capitals-in-a-day journey, by leaving Cardiff City Hall (a building as beautiful as the Bug is ugly) and returning in iust under 23 hours, having gone to Edinburgh and London in the meantime. The distance was 958 miles, so the drivers, D. Jones and D. Tilley, must believe in self-torture. They encountered fog, snow and rain en route.

These days it is the economy factor which is of interest; petrol thirst was 43.6 m.p.g. and a pint of oil was put in. This represents less than one penny per mile, but in the new currency, for in old-pence it equals 1.9d. per mile. The running-time average speed we find remarkable. It is given as 56.3 m.p.h. and the drivers say it could have been higher if the edge hadn’t been blunted by meals and rest periods. To average over 50 m.p.h. in any car on a 17-hour marathon of this kind in our kind of traffic wouldn’t be bad. To better 56 m.p.h. in a 700 cc vehicle makes things like Scimitars seem unnecessarily cumbersome and expensive.