David and Goliaths

Sir,

Your article in the November issue covering the 1914 Sunbeam cars was most interesting.

In your first paragraph you refer to the Peugeot of 7.6 litres winning against the monster 14 litre FIAT. I would have thought that 7.6 litres was enough to be termed a monster in itself. However, it is certainly remarkable that a car with half the engine size could oust the “bit boys”.

Something even more remarkable is the Type13 Bugatti of 1,327 c.c. coming in second to a 10.5-litre FIAT in 1911!

I also recall that in the 1920S a Mr. Frank Lockhart designed the Stutz “Black Hawk”, a 3-litre straight-eight capable in tests of approximately 200 m.p.h. It was to compete for the Land Speed Record against a Triplex, using I believe no less than three Liberty Aero Engines; somewhere around 70-litres.

I wonder how many other David and Goliaths there are, for the subject is quite fascinating.

London, NW3 P. HOPKINS

V-E-V Odds & Ends. Arthur Lowe, who plays the part of Capt. Mainwaring in the BBC’s. “Dad’s Army” show and who is billed as Watson in a new Sherlock Holmes play, has 32-metre, one-funnel boat Amazon, which apparently laid down 83 years ago by a Tankerville Chamberlayne, according to article in Woman. Could there be a connection here with the Tankerville-Chamberlayne wich raced a 1914 Narraro at Brooklands in 1921, was the entrant of an ancient Charron for the act Miles Mander, and later in the nineteen-twenties ran a London motor business for a short time with Parry Thomas? The father, perhaps? The motortricycle which that enthusiast from Wales Johnny Thomas of the Big Bentley, rode successfully through the last Brighton Run, is Rochet, not a Rocket as printed in our report although when we saw it from the lofty heights of Roger Collings’ Mercedes, it was certainly like a rocket…. It has become quite the thing to have vintage motor-cars at wedding ceremony and at a New Zealand wedding two vintage Morris cars and a 1929 Wolseley were and at another such ceremony in the same country a Morris-Cowley was joined by Chrysler and Dodge cars. The owner of a 1930 Morris-Cowley van has saved the remains of a 1927 Morris-Oxford which was originally used in London by the Redline Motor Spirit Co. Ltd.

A 1908 12.8-litre GP Panhard-Levassor similar to that in the Schlumpf Collection France, is being rebuilt in this country, a rumour says that the 200 h.p. V8 engine fr Guinness’ 1905 Darracq still exists here. Hay referred to the chamfered gear-gate on Brooklands’ Straker-Squire, done to speed-up change from 2nd to 3rd gear, I find this to ha been standard practice on the 1907 40th Argyll. –W.B.