THE CHINA `MAIL, SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1958.
ROBERT GLENTON_tests_the_Austin Healey Sprite
Just watch your wife put her foot down!
I was this month's
only fair morning. And there we were, all driving to work. No temper, no impatience. The sunshine slanted through the exhaust fumes, and we were thinking beautiful thoughts. About getting
an increase in pay; of a holiday in the Carib- bean. Even arriving home with a mink coat for the wife.
If Billy Graham had been un A.A. scout we couldn't have been a more lovable lot.
That was until an opch sports car rocketed Past with EL throal-clearing growl of a racing gear change, I honestly think we would have all smiled bone- volently if I hadn't been for the driver. It was a woman. A tient, matronly woman.
Odd thing
Gone was the sunshine. Gone the good will, We took off in red-feed, fult cry. Snarling, bullying, wo were jammed in the
PHOTS
The Austin Healey
Sprite
maker:
One con fice over the horizon at 80 miles an hour,
(LENTON'S SCORE CARD
have mel.
The light-
ingerent
would give
ма, Fehlax.
Beurke
10:
A big
Cogine
10
Start de
Steering
#
20.
Acceleration
Lower, ofars
A
tug for.
Suppo Cornering
B
VOLD AEM.
Noi often
Akttersli
7 COULD
Comfort
10
about the
peduli.
far the cheapest real sports car that one can buy.
botany at
Futeb
10
ithe price to
pare
R
CITAT
The whole bonnet is up
This shows itself only in very mint ways: rubber floor mais,
Phange handles....Things linny
complain
hex roundabout six deep, like ne an audience fleeing through a about. theatre front door when the kaanaketnent Announces
there
hus been a small conflagratio:.-- and wil we please keep our seats.
Fortunately the sports cu turned off down a side street, and we saved a little of our face.
11 an odd thing Only the most reactionury of hideboumi men will now insist that women can't drive. But it is on Intolerable affront to be carved skiltul, fast, feminine up by motorist,
I'm afraid that we are going to be affronted a lot more from
now oil.
For 1 have now tested the new Healey Sprite, and I can't nagine there will be many wives who will not insist on driving once it is in the family garage.
I'm not pationising the car.. P not suggesting that is hot worth serious
masculine thought us a small sports car. Dut it is so light to handle, su gentle drive, and so free from that thunderous din that people mistake for performance,
The first nltraction of this ear of course is its price, It is by
door van'i
possibly
So shapely
The shag with producing a cheap car, is that must makers have not the money to get a rol-class body designer, B.M.C. love,
The Sprite is shapely. The entire bonnet lifts up to Kive access to the engine.
Although raising it calls for ny amount of manual labour, 1 kost gives the average at owner complete freedom to gu to work with a spanner.
1
There is
SeoT WE Filipened up.
Jespite its tiny, unobtrusive engine The Sprite is a sports car. So I drove it headlong for over -200 miles,
There was never the suggest tion of an Incident. What did
and?
It is quite possible to make the back end of the car kid away, but one has to be harth to do it, und even then
easy to check,
I
There was never a suggestion of fade from the brakes. Because
I had been betting ut this time [Rae John- stone told earlier how he re- nounced all gambling in 19403 the furniture would " have been in hock through- out the winter. The Comte de Chambure was betting virtually on one thing that there would be mud at November Manchester on
16. Which is hardly a pro- position about which you would be allowed to name your own odds.
And betting sometime be- of the leg room and the splendid bucket seats I climbed out unfore the 1946 November rullied, and ready, to double the Handicap he Becured LTE distance.
averago
of 20-1 to his The engine was sill as snooth
horse calledlˆ and silen!. Only
Lear money on a the elringe showed a tendency to Dorot,
liften up.
This is simply a two-seater.
.
I had won on Dornot on
For the rest, B.M.C. have used almost entirely well-lested components
other from their cars.
No amount of imagination can September 9 the previous The steering is pure Morris crowd in a third human, Not Minor. It is spinsterly precise even if you dismember him year when he was a three and delicate, Su much so that and tuck him in the boot, for year-old, and again this sea- the heavy-handed driver might there is very little luggage space. son at Longchamp in May easily find himself snaking a bit It is full of spare wheel...and June: 6-4. was the ut first.
and the lowered hood, This longest price he ever start
The gear change is good with And my finest praise
Favourite
the exception of a lou long floor- is the first hood I have manageded on any of the three occa- muunted gear lever that practi- to take down and put up without sions. tally removed my thumb nail on having to look round for an the dashboard within minutes, acetylene culter, three bandages,
The gear ratios themselves are and a few missing fingers. not deal. First and second arc much too low.
in third gear and top the acceleration is vivid enough to suit the most unfortunate book-
ROUND-UP
CAMERONS' OLD COLOURS
Queen hos lend them to the regiment for the reunion.
THE PEACEFUL
The figures
a
RAE JOHNSTONE telling all:
A gamble I lose
in the fog
ON A HORSE
THAT REALLY GLORIED
IN THE MUD!
CHAPTER 5; The Rae Johnstone Story, the most sought-after racing account in recent years, has been secured for China Mail readers be cause it is a frank—often brutally frank
account of his life on and off the race tracks. The Inside Story, the Hottest Story in racing today.
understandably, were tacking trainers doubted whether they round on the outer. It was just would be able to get their horses matter of going when we to the track. Mud was in Vago- wanted to. But there was still bond's favour despite his weight, plenty of time. Five and a half for he loved the soft. furlongs to run and Domot was just cantering. But cantering.
A Snap
Then suddenly I heard shap; he faltered. I shouted to anyone who might be following and deanounter. And there it was, a broken fetlock.
to keep clear, pulled him up,
I slipped the reins
over his
head and he bent down to sniff the mud. There was precious little grass to pick where Dornot stood. And thero wns nothing around but the fog.
policeman Presently a peared, "What's happened to you?" asked. I told him to hold the horse and ran up the
He liked a right-hand course like Manchester, and course to fetch the vet.
a dismal trek.
Now for performance:- GEAR SPEEDS: Top, 40 miles his action was styled for an hour; third, 04 miles an hour; mud the sort of heavy second, 38 miles an hour. The ground that would hamper speedometer was 3.5 miles an most of his opponents but hour fast at 60 miles an hour,
ACCELERATION: 0-30 miles assist him..
an hour; 5.4secs.; 0-50 miles an hour, 13.5sees,
FUEL CONSUMPTION: Driven fat out, around 33 miles 23-runner a gallon,
up-
It was
And
"Eh, lad, Lin's forgotten horse," called a racegoer as I later as I ran along the fence by passed the silver ring. the main ring I caught: "Well, there's his bloody jockey, any way."
By the day of the race he was 6-1 favourite in the
field. "Heavy The Comte came down the the vet and the going" was the newspaper irnek with FOR THE TECHNICAL: summary of the ground. horsefloat was detailed to pick Engine, four cylinder, overheadI'll say it was. And foggy much pain-we hoped.
54ins..
This colt, by a French Derby winner out of 2
up Domnot. He wouldn't feel
Foiled
LAST colours, 10 years old, to be carried into action by the valve, 046 c... brake horse
Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders will be on display along power, 45 at 8,500 r.p.m. Sus- too. side the present colours of the battalion at a regimental reunion pension, front, Independent, coji at Dover Castle on July 25. The reunion, to which all porving and spring: rear, quarter elliptic, ex-Camerons are invited, particularly commemorates the centenary | anti roll bar, of the Battle of Lucknow in which the regiment played a dis-i PRICE: £445. Tolal, includ- French Oaks winner, way Taken to Newmarket, Dornot Unguished port. The colours which will be on display were ing tax, £008 178. carried by the regiment during the Crimean War and the Indian
WILL IT FIT YOUR GAR-the best mud runner I had was kept in sings for several was fully Mutiny. Since 1873, when Queen Victorio presented new colours to | AGE? Lenth, 11ft.
ever sat on. He just gal- months until ho the battalion, they have been laid up in Balmoral Castle and the width, 4ft, 5ins., height (with loped on top of it. So that ended. Then he was given to Michael Beary, who sent him to hood), 4. 1ins.
on the way to the post Ireland to stand at stud. And "Smirkie" (Charlie Smirke), he soon started to get winners. the Domol gamble. who was riding Sir Eric That was
Folled by a chance in a milon.j Ohlson's much-fancied re- cent winner Star of Autumn, That was, and is, rating. turned to me as he noted
The Lincoln, was not my lucky Dornot's action and
eX- race. Following the claimed: "You'll
a 1834 defeat of Quartz, my next
attempt was In the freak year, 1947 on one-eyed Vagabond II, who was oue of several French horses I found being prepared for the Lincoln when I returned from Australia in February, that year. English trainers had been of hopelessly held up owing to a
TANK
IN the quiet Yorkshire town of Mexborough a 26-ton Bri- tish Centurion tank is being pui to peaceful use. A huulage con- Uactor. Mr Thomas Briggs is using it to level of a field be- hind the Ferryboat Inn. An or- dinary bulldozer had failed to produce any effect on the sur- face of the field and Mr Briggs
BY
0
THE
•
WAY.
by Beachcomber
AM still obsessed with this of the House of Commons from hundred yards"
car-scratching. I remember drink restrictions,
the Baroness von Lauder Off to the party Schauling, on enormous beldame
with ears which flapped like
my ERMAINE,
gloves! (Down, Rover!). Mason loose shutters when she sat in a ring up the garage! Barrington decided to use the Centurion, drought,
(down, Rover), post this letter!
She used to scratch alternato
win
Precaution
We had taken every pre- caution, including that
which is one at four he bought two months ago. "It's just the
Solange, my (down Rover) anticipating the fog. We bitter winter. job for this sort of heavy work, cols with a long Ivory-handled handbag! Beatrice (down, Hover made the journey i couple
Centurions them-
he said. "The four
have already paid for selves in demolitics jobs."*
་
BEES CAN'T BE POSTED "TO CANADA
.
my (I ald
ΚΩΣΤΟΥ
The fact that horses could be down, Rover!), gadget engraved with her
kept on the nove in France dur- tlara Grayson, of days before the event. down, Rover!) armorial bearings. One day take Royer for a walk! Down,
ing, the big freeze in England while she was walidng down
There had already been (I wasn't so hot our side, either narrow alley in the town of Grayson-I mean Rover!
six races over the round I may add) promoted-a seven- Nibbelsburg. a fierce gust of Here, there, and
everywhere course at the meeting, 60 was to be one of the worst races strong raiding party for what window on each elde of "the ONE HUNDRED AND the ground was by now in which I over took part. street was smashed, ono by each TWELVE THOUSAND TONS of really churned up on the
wind cauglit her ears, and a
1lb.
the seven-year-old, who
dar. They were merry days at liquorice were stolen from a "inner," and must riders Although · Vagabond. had Ost. A 100-PAGE Post Office Guide her schloss: She sold it last year harge at Nerd woven hundred and either received instruc- had fu's near-alde eye kicked out
Just issued says, among for a pong, remarking non- Three thousand other things, you must not post chalantly. Their profit, my and forty-one men and a huge tions, or decided on their by an unfriendly fellow yourling woman, all of them took part in own initiative to keep away when He was still running in his the robbery, were questioned by the polleo, a they removed the from the fence. What could paddock,, had possibly enough stuff,
be better? I had the inside class to pull him through. THRE MEN who were making borth to myself.
bees to Canada, arms to Brazil, schloss,"
pearls to the Argentine, playing
cards to the Canary Islands, In passing',
saccharin to Corsica, sali to
Greece, or football pool coupons UR professional politicians
bees to anyone so long as he only a curmudgeon will repent Acollan Ifall during a concert
His Russlan emigro trainer,
pretty good shape and his owner
Jo Malta. But you can post live have so few privileges tint a boller In a corner of the The effect was that of Joseph Ginzbourg, had him in does not live in Canada, and their latest attempt to placa were cheered by the audience, one runner equipped with M. Victor Dalian went Roc a provided you pick them pro- themselves above the low as it who thought they were part of spiked shoes competing good, win, perly. Also Iivo leeches and applies to 10 rest of the the orchestra.
against opponents who Just before Lincoln the frost Alikworms. If you want to send country. It is monstrous that WHILE demonstrating eggs, poultry, gane, rabbits the people who make our laws electric hat to keep the head were floundering in rubber relaxed its grip and gave way to
·severe flooding. Many English mont, fruit or vegetables you should be subject to them. Be warm Alfred Futtigrue, 34, of boota must use the parcel post. The fare we know where we are Mold Bulidings, Nibbleham Although we were fifth or so,
The Lac Johnstone Story will Guide also warns against using (and by the way, where are dislocated his elbow and tell just whore I wanted to be, there Queen Victoria or King Edward we?), we shall have holheads into a goldfish pond. He was was nothing but the fog imme, be published later this year by VII stamps na they are obsolete. protesting against the freedom rescued by a milkman,
diately ahead; "as 'the others, Blanicy Paul & Co. Lid,
The following morning, Tucs day, March 23, the day before the Lincoln, the stewards or dered all rates to be run on the round
course and dispensed with the starting-gate for all six and seven furlong sucés,
By Wednesday the truck was churned into a sea of mud; there was a doubt whether the 46-strong, record-sized field for the handicap could be started in one Ene.
A Scrum
The start was like sorum.. Anybody who sweating wasn't trying.
for a chance to get in when we were off-sume of us, - Vuga- bend caught a clout thpt all but knocked him off his feet as we charged towards the left-hand bend..
We never got In a blow and the whole event was best suma-
who marised by *Smirkie" declared as ho slung his mud- Boaked Baddie on the dressing- WOTBO room floor: "That won than the invasion of Sicily!" Ken Gethin go! out of trouble carly on and would doubílóm have won on Persian Book hid
Querneuville, not
swerving under the urgent" pressure of Paul Blanc, who saw a four- figure present awaiting him in the goalmouth, moved off a true line and lot Jockey. Trebiť in between them,
As it was, an 18-year-old Mercer, Manny apprentice, darted through the opening and get up to win on his 100-1 chance Jockey Treble by a neck
Persian from
Book, with Quemtuvillo another head away third.
NEXT WEEK
4 Rugby wasn't And
I nearly turn
con-
down a ride
As we flew over the English the air was blue, as Captain
Pole, countryside to Lincoln it was Chandos
the starter, pitted with lakes and the pros- tackled the worst job an official pect of the race taking place in his position had ever seemed remote. In fact, the fronted. first day's programme,' due to take place on the waterlogged course, had to be abandoned.
*Smirkic" on Roi d'Atout was still appealing to the starter
for the Queen!
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