The Autocar ON THIS DAY

Autocar has published correspondence since the very start. Here’s a selection from Christmases past showing how readers’ concerns have – or maybe haven’t – changed

Oh là là, monsieur, there’s going to be a lot of lawsuits…

Why the public waits

Having lately conceived an interest in autocars, I have purchased a few of your journals, and am struck by, what seems to me, the indifference of the makers to the points which are of very great moment to the (would-be) purchasing public, in which I include myself.

We do not care much about differential gears, steam versus spirit, and axles, and are not greatly interested in HP, BHP (whatever that is!), and long-distance racing with mountain climbing, but what we do ask for is that someone shall invent a machine which shall not vibrate, not smell, and not make a noise in its internal organs. We would like it to take a couple of us up an average hill, to run 12 miles an hour on the level, and not to require repair more than once a month, but these are secondary matters.

To sit on a rumbling, vibrating, and evil-smelling machine outside a shop, or in traffic, and be bombarded by hoots of derision, and the audible comments of passers-by and the great unemployed, requires more sang-froid and courage than, I fear, are possessed by [myself].

Waiting Hopefully 1898

The flying problem

True! The attainment of greater engine power has something to do with the achievement of flying, but it will have little, if anything, to do with the perfect flying machine of the future, which will be aoneman apparatus requiring [the occupant’s] manual power only.

We’ve but to review the progress of mechanical science to see how the obstructing forces of nature are overcome by engine power. But we must not forget that engine power overcomes much of the obstructing force by violent means, and this mob energy may not be so readily converted to man’s use in the upper, unstable realm to which [he’d] fly.

Is this how we’ll all travel in the future?