Those Absurd Prices

Sir,
The November editorial equates strangely with later advertisements in the same issue at prices similar to the very ones deprecated. Since it should be presumable that the editorial is an expression of policy, it is an important extension of this policy not to promulgate such provocative matter. I stoutly defend the right to submit these advertisements but even more so the Editor’s right and duty to refuse publication. Let us see no more of them; there have already been too many.

It does encourage me to see one car at £395 apparently unsold since the August issue, and I hope this means the buying public is showing good sense and temporary self-abnegation as a protest against this growing opportunism. Less exotic vehicles may afford equal satisfaction to owners who have worked and suffered over their improvement and restoration, and such may still be found with diligence at prices not too bizarre. Certainly I face the future more tranquilly with my 1928 open Riley Nine than I would with a £6,000 1929 Bentley-4, since my car is for motoring—I have already motored over 300,000 miles in it—not for speculation. Moreover the spares position, both new and second-hand, is more favourable. When my crankshaft broke this summer, fitted second-hand eight years ago, I had a free replacement from a Register owner from Stourbridge in three days.

It grieves me to think of the unpleasant plight approaching the owners of certain makes, pumped in with the followers of Mammon who, by their commercial rnortmain, will be depriving more worthy men. It is said that this at least preserves cars for posterity which would otherwise be lost. To hell with this I say. Keep a few in museums by all means, but let the rest be liberated for enthusiastic use or let them perish.

Liverpool. J.E. McGowen.
[Re the opening paragraph of this letter, I refer you, with regret, to the footnote on another page.—Ed.]