So typical

We were pleased, and not a little surprised, to find that the leading article in The Evening News of January 2nd had a distinctly motoring flavour. The author, Max Breen, mentioned such cars as a 1921 Overland Austin Seven, an Armstrong-Siddeley Eighteen which did 100,000 miles in five years, hauling a 12 ft. caravan part of the time, an Isotta-Fraschini, a Black Hawk Stutz which scared its owner by doing 87 m.p.h., an air-cooled Rover Eight, and so on. Some of the statements about these cars’ characteristics should have warned us, but, going on to read of the beauties and fascination of specific parts of this country, experienced during; “grand days and great drives,” we momentarily believed the Editor of The Evening News to have sanctioned the publication of a real motoring article. Alas, towards its close Max Breen outlines some of the less pleasant aspects of motoring—swinging the Isotta on cold mornings, pushing the Rover over Craig-y-Bwlch, flat tyres on the way to theatre or dance, sudden wild skids on ice-bound roads, and a ” broken steering column . . . ” Warming to his task, Breen tells of “at least two backward crashes into other vehicles when a dependable old friend changed without warning into a violently intractable slithering monster,” and of “that eternal instant of impact on the Hog’s Back and the sight of bodies flung far and wide.” He recalls an old lady falling between his car and a tram one night in the Old Kent Road, and concludes his justification of the title “I’m Going to Enjoy This Ex-Motoring” by saying he remembers on the roads of Britain a grim succession of smashes in which he was not involved, after which there were those who would never motor again . . . ” After owning ten cars in eighteen years he wrote his article. The Evening News published it. So typical of the Sensational Press and those who contribute to it.