The tyre controversy

Sir,

I had expected a “bromide” from the Dunlop Rubber Company, and this, I see, comes in the form of a letter from Mr. J. D. Sinclair, of that firm, his communication following your publication of my recent letter lambasting the present-day Dunlop tyre. I notice that Mr. Sinclair makes no apology—indeed no reference at all—to the standard Dunlop car tyres which I described as having burst (all four of ’em and the spare) over a relatively short period of use.

Mr. Sinclair does, however, take me to task for using motor-cycle tyres (the Dunlop “Universal”) on an Austin 7, and states all the respects In which these are unsuitable for use on a four-wheeled vehicle. Well now, Mr. Sinclair is presumably an expert, while I am only a layman in these matters; and while I cannot see why a tyre which is supposed to withstand the thrust of a motorcycle rear wheel at sixty or seventy m.p.h. will not do for any slow old buffer poodling along at 25 m.p.h. in an ancient Austin—especially as four tyres, and not one, take the thrust (if any) of these aged vehicles—nevertheless I feel it presumptuous for me to argue with a man in the trade.

In apologising, then, for using the Dunlop Universals on a car, I suppose I must also apologise to those other firms—Firestone, Michelin, Avon, etc.— whose motor-cycle tyres grace my various Austin 7S, The real point, however, is that these makes invariably give jolly good service, whether they are being wrongly used or not, while those provided by Mr. Sinclair’s firm—as I stated in my last letter—burst in the wall with such depressing regularity that it is certain I shall never use them again, while I sweat constantly for all those speeding motor-cyclists whose machines may still be “Universally” shod.

Jack Marshall.
Truro.