Paper age

Some enthusiasts are still fortunate enough to run high-performance cars on their lawful occasions, but for the great majority this is, alas, a Paper Age. Those folk of our world who are fighting the Nazi overseas, and those who are striving at home to maintain the war effort, derive no little satisfaction from being able to read about the pastime with which they once had more active associations.

We must count ourselves fortunate that the motoring Press has suffered so few casualties. Laurence Pomeroy, Douglas Tubbs and other writers in The Motor are doing grand work, not only by unearthing and sorting out motor-racing history and technical achievement, but in writing-up the very early days of the motoring movement.

In The Autocar, H. S. Linfield is aided by keen readers in turning out weekly his unique “Talking of Sports Cars” feature, which constitutes both an invaluable record, and a yardstick of almost every sports car built during the last decade and a half. Those who can preserve the aforesaid articles will ultimately possess a quite remarkable record of motoring history and endeavour, such as hardly existed, certainly did not exist in such concise form, before this war. In our own way, too, we do what we can to maintain interest in, and further the knowledge of, the Sport; a task which it would be quite impossible even to attempt were it not for the generosity and ability of voluntary contributors. And so, for wartime, the lot of the enthusiast is not altogether an unhappy one.

But with the return of peace will come a great and widespread desire to re-experience to the full the pleasures of motoring in this green and pleasant land in cars of no mean performance. So let us remind authority now that the motoring enthusiast, as we know him, has contributed as much as anyone to winning the war and has sacrificed more than most in the process. In consequence he will expect reasonable consideration when motoring is again possible. He will not welcome continued high taxation and unfair methods of extracting it. He will not take lightly to new petty restrictions having no bearing on increased road safety. He will be unlikely to look kindly on further raids on the Road Fund while our system of roadways remains ill-suited to the volume of traffic it has to carry.

We hope that authority will be sage and will enable all road users to be amongst the happier mortals in the promised brave new age. If this is not the case, we can only hope that the hitherto inoffensive and retiring section of the community known as “motorist” will commence to write letters to their M.P.s, to answer promptly Press and public criticisms, and generally to constitute such a nuisance that their all-too-reasonable demands will have to be satisfied.