CARS AND COMFORTS FOR TOURING

Many New Things, Large and Small, Have Been Invented to Smooth the Way for Summer Motorists

IT IS the season of the highway and the hedgerow; the long days on roads bordered with fresh green, as yet innocent of summer dust, the evening spins in touring car or runabout when the shadows that wall in the beams from your headlights are softer than at any other season and the night air, as you glide by some ghostly garden, is sweet with the breath of roses. You will miss the great opportunities of motoring if your speedometer does not pile the majority of its yearly thousands from this time until the first snow flies. Of course, you will use your car, or one of your cars, as a convenience, a vehicle to take you somewhere, just as you do at every other season, but if you are anything of an enthusiast, you also will drive or be driven nowhere in particular —merely out into the great outdoors, and you will feel the Romany spell upon you and the stir of the Gypsy blood.

Fortunately, one does not need to like hardship or even bear mild discomfort with equanimity nowadays, in order to get the best of motor touring. The builder of motor carriages and the countless appurtenances that go with them has seen to that. So one may have his enjoyment of the open and at the same time enjoy quite as much comfort as on the veranda. It is only a question of selection. Some of the things from which to select—a few out of the very many which this season has to show—are described in the following paragraphs. First and most important is the car itself.

AS HAS been hinted more than once in these pages, the motor carriage has reached a point in its development when radical mechanical changes are not to be expected from year to year. The evolution is one of minor matters, especially those which make for the convenience of the motorist. In choosing your car this year you need look, therefore, for no startling novelties of mechanism, unless it be, perhaps, the overhead valve motor embodied in a car which is illustrated in this issue. Look for the features of body design which will mean the most enjoyment on your short and long trips in the months to come. One of the points to watch is the relation of the seats to the axles. As the designer at one of the American factories has well said, the automobile builder in this country is all too apt to give the best place in the car to the luggage. By this he means that the rear seats are placed too far forward of the rear axle and the choice position of the car, in which the full benefit of the springing can be obtained, is given over to suit case compartments, cupboards and the like. This is a matter in which foreign designers—speaking generally—have shown more foresight than those of this country.

TF YOU care at all about driving your own machine, and even if you do not, as a measure of safety, see that the control mechanisms are conveniently placed. In most of the better cars this season, all the necessary switches, the recording instruments, the gauges and the like, are grouped or centralized so that they are within easy reach of the man at the wheel. Look to the position of the starter pedal and see that the center control levers are at the right distance from your hand and not in the way of your right leg—if you choose a left-hand drive machine, as you probably will. In some cases these levers as well as the various foot pedals are adjustable, so that different lengths of limb may be accommodated. Be sure that the doors, both to the tonneau and the front seat, are wide and that the running boards are not encumbered with tool boxes, tire irons or other impedimenta. For long touring, convenient leather cases or covers for a tier of suit cases to be carried on the running boards can be obtained, but these can be so mounted as not to interfere in the least with entrance.

IN THE open car, one of the most important accessories is the top. Tops have undergone radical improvement of late and have evolved from rather unsightly and very cumbersome necessities into convenient and smart looking additions to the car. The better ones can be raised quickly and without descending from the machine. They have comparatively few bows, many being arranged to fasten to the top of the windshield and not use heavy, vision-obstructing stanchions to the front seat. Many materials are used, one of the best of which is a light but very strong English burbank.

Everyone whose motoring experience goes back more than a few seasons, remembers the horror of putting on a set of old-fashioned curtains. The recollection of this undertaking, probably accomplished in the midst of a violent thunderstorm, is as vivid as it is unpleasant. First came the scurry out of the car at the last minute, after it had been decided half a dozen times, and the decision as many times reversed, that shelter could be reached before the top would be needed. Then, while the drops grew bigger and more frequent, all the occupants of the tonneau and, usually, those of the front seat as well, had to stand up while the lockers beneath the seats were ransacked for the bundle of curtains. Then came a sort of roadside picture puzzle game, trying queerly shaped pieces of stiff and muddy leather, or near-leather, here, there and everywhere, until the proper aperture was found. Finally, the turning of oily little eye bolts, some of which wouldn't turn, completed the task and you climbed back into the car, grimy, well soaked with rain and thoroughly out of temper. This sort of thing belongs to the dark ages of motoring, however, for now light and serviceable curtains are contrived to roll or fold up into the top, to which they are attached, and it is only necessary to let them drop when the top has been put up and fasten them, from inside the vehicle.

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SHOULD your summer plans include a good deal of long touring it would be well to have a power tire pump under the bonnet of your car. In several of this season's models such a pump is fitted, and one can be obtained as a separate item of equipment also. They will save a deal of time and effort by the roadside, for there are times when fate is unusually perverse and even the supply of spares does not prove sufficient to take one home. It is on occasions such as this that the power pump justifies its existence and the motorist can have much satisfaction in watching his engine, developing anyOuring where from twenty to one hundred horse power, do the unpleasant, heat generating work that would otherwise have to be performed by one perspiring man power.

The matter of motor car luggage is one largely of personal taste and is influenced also by the special requirements of the trip one proposes to make. Its variety is almost infinite. A special cover for suitcases has been mentioned already. Trunks, big and little, are to be found at the many specialty shops, but the coming of the wire wheel has rather put the sparetire trunk, that circular affair resembling a gigantic bandbox, that used to serve as a drum or core for the extra shoes on the running board, in the shade. The wire wheels are carried complete with the tires mounted, and thus there is no central space in which a trunk can be fitted. A convenient practice in the models of the year is to make a combination out of the rear gasoline tank rack and let it serve as a trunk rack as well.

For short runs, picnic and luncheon baskets and boxes, fitted, of course, with the necessary tableware, are to be had in infinite variety. Some of the more complete outfits contain fireless cookers as well as the customary plates, sandwich boxes, salad containers and so forth. The motor camp kit of which there is an illustration in this issue is a really practical traveling kitchen, containing, in addition to utensils, such desirable but frequently neglected articles as a dish mop and a number of dish towels. An attractive bit of equipment for a little spin that is to include a stop for a light luncheon out of doors is a leather case containing two vacuum bottles with an aluminum sandwich and cake box fitted snugly between them. This kit is built on the premise that fingers were made before forks, but although it is small in bulk and light it will hold enough for a satisfactory snack for four persons. A more elaborate luncheon outfit consists of a combined sideboard and table with brass legs that extend in a surprising tubular fashion, apparently from nowhere, and an imposing array of crockery and glassware.

To any single department—motors, for instance—Vanity Fair can naturally allot only a very small portion of its pages. It is, however, always ready to take up in correspondence with its readers any matters of motor interest. We shall be glad not only to answer questions and secure catalogues, but, if you desire, to aid you in the selection of cars and accessories, and to keep you informed of the latest innovations and developments in the automobile world. A postal card will always bring you the name of the manufacturer of articles described in this or any other department of Vanity Fair, and advice as to where they can be purchased.

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NOTHING in the domain of goggles—those indispensable companions of any speed above the most leisurely or of main traveled roads—has come out this season to displace the soft rubber kind in which eye pieces and head strap arc all of the same material. These may be adjusted to the size of one's head, of course, and they have the advantage of staying in place and not pinching the nose. Spectacle goggles, either with tortoiseshell rims or with wire gauze cages at the sides are also popular. For the woman motorist there is a simple way of killing two birds with one stone; that is to chose a motor veil which contains an isinglass strip across the eyes and thus serves as goggles as well as veil. But little weight is added to the veil by this arrangement and— an important point—it is more becoming than ordinary goggles can even be to women.

CYCLECARS in this country show decided signs of vitality, even though many of those announced have not gone beyond the stage of blue prints as yet. Already dates have been set for competitions, which is a healthy symptom, for contests have marked the phenomenally successful course of vehicles of this class abroad from the beginning. There is to be race, followed by competitions of other kinds, in New Jersey on May 30, and the Detroit and Chicago cyclecar clubs have joined forces to hold a joint run to Indianapolis for the 500 mile speedway race to be held on the same date. Many entries for this run have been booked and it seems likely to make some cyclecar history.

THE Indianapolis race will probably be the best that has been held on the brick speedway. Certainly a field has been brought together which is of exceptional quality, both as to cars and drivers. Among the competitors on Decoration Day will be foreign and American cars which have captured the world's chief racing honors, including the Mercedes, Peugeot, Sunbeam, Mercer, Stutz, Isotta-Fraschini, Delage and Marmon. The drivers for this long grind include Goux, last year's winner; Boillot, winner of the last French Grand Prix; Duray, who drove a De Dietrich here in one of the Vanderbilt Cup Races; De Palma, winner of this year's Vanderbilt at Santa Monica and with a long record of victories behind him; Bragg, among whose victories is an American Grand Prix; the redoubtable Barney Oldfield, Burman, Mulford, and Pullen, who took the Grand Prix in California this year. Unless weather conditions are unfavorable, as they were last May when the great heat necessitated frequent tire changes, a lowering of the 500 mile record is not improbable.