Car Works Pushover Gate
William Benke got tired of jumping in and out of his car to open the gate to his west Texas ranch. So he invented the automatic gate at left. The car pushes down the gate (top photo); rides over it (center); then, after hydraulic checks hold it down, it rises (bottom). Hawley Mfg. Co., Houston, makes the Push-Over Gate.

Huge Vacuum Cleaner Sweeps Golf Links to Find Balls

SEARCH for golf balls lost in dried cut grass may no longer be a bugbear to golfers, thanks to a giant vacuum sweeper, recently invented, that picks up leaves, grass, paper, etc., from fairways.

Utilizing the principles of the ordinary household cleaner the unique machine, shown above, is capable of clearing debris from nine golf fairways in one day.

A “planer blower,” mounted on a trailer, furnishes the suction, drawing the debris with such force that it is blown through a long pipe into a cage built on a motor truck. An old automobile motor mounted on the trailer furnishes power for the blower.

Truck Like Section of Giant Tire
A LARGE rubber factory has just recently put into service the unique truck shown below. The body is built to resemble a section of a huge tire, the tread and design being built of composition material. It is claimed that the section was built in proportion to the exact scale of a smaller tire. The truck is being used to carry mail to and from the factory.

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Confessions of a Hot-Rod Jockey

By Earl Bruce – Amateur Champion

If you’re smart, careful and a mighty good mechanic you too can “soup-up” an automobile and become a “screaming” hot-rodder DRIVING a “hot rod” or “souped-up” car is a sport—cleanly competitive, law-abiding, and as reasonably safe as airplane, bike, or midget auto racing, boxing, football, or any other spine-tingling spectacle that thrills Americans in the country’s arenas today.

That’s my story and I’ll stick to it.
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Auto in Movies Offers Tips to Industry

Containing many features which might be considered and possibly-adopted by the automobile industry for incorporation into future models, a streamline car appears in one of the latest motion pictures. Its flowing lines result in a body with low wind resistance without sacrificing eye appeal.

“Herringbone” Seating for Bus Gives More Visibility

Improved visibility for each passenger is one feature of the latest German-built motor coach with accommodations for twenty-three persons. The seats are set in a herringbone arrangement instead of side by side and are placed low to bring the passenger’s eye on a level with the lower half of the window. At the rear of the bus are two full-length seats, running transversely and facing each other. All of the seats are attached directly to the frame, with a gangway or walkway sunk on each side. The body proper is simply a shell set around the seats and attached to the frame. Rated at seventy-five miles per hour, the vehicle has two tail fins designed to reduce air vibrations at high speed, thus increasing speed. Duralumin is used in the construction of the bus.

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Auto Made from Beans

Versatile Plant Furnishes Chop Suey Sauce and Plastic Moulded Parts for Cars

PLASTICS — chemical compounds which, are compressed under heat into desired shapes, and thereafter are not subject to corrosion—are increasingly in use. Some are made of coal-tar products, some of milk; and one, which Henry Ford is now employing extensively, utilizes the Chinese soy bean. This useful plant, is, next to rice, the staff of life in the Celestial republic; like beans, peas, and other “legume” plants, it contains the proteins, or nitrogen compounds, for which we eat meat. Its oil, also, has found many uses; and those who have eaten the great American national dish, chop suey, are familiar with the dark soy sauce which accompanies it. The mechanical uses of the soy bean (which does not resemble American beans) are of more recent discovery. Read the rest of this entry »

Sounds like a great idea because no one would ever consider disabling their disk dispenser.

“Hit-Run” Drivers Identified by Disks Discharged by Car
HIT and run drivers, long a deadly menace of the highways, may he apprehended in the future hy means of a stream of identification disks discharged by their cars as they speed away from the scene of the accident. Read the rest of this entry »

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Rolling around America

By Robert R. Reynolds
United States Senator from North Carolina

TRAVEL, with its many broadening influences, should be a major course, required in every man’s education.

Travel is expensive only if you choose to make it expensive. It can be as cheap as staying at home. Our roads are good, our automobiles are relatively cheap, the cost of fuel is low, and food and lodging, if you look for them in the right places, are not high.

I nursed a pet theory for a long time before I was able to try it out. I believed it was possible to spend thirty days seeing America from coast to coast, and from Canada to Mexico, at a total cost of $100 per person in actual travel expenses. And by seeing America I don’t mean racing from dawn to dark along the highways until you’re so tired driving you can’t sleep and so sleepy you can’t drive.
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Boys Power Auto-Scooter With a One-Cylinder Motor

GEORGE WENDEL, 12 and Billy Hawkins, 11, of Detroit, Michigan, failed to find the proper outlet for their speed urge in the ordinary scooter. Bicycles, even, palled after a time, for were they not muscle-powered vehicles of a by-gone generation?

So George and Billy picked up some rubber-tired wheels from a toy wagon, an ancient one-lung gasoline motor, and an assortment of odds and ends, and are now burning up the pavements of the Michigan metropolis.

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What will Your Next Car Look Like?

by Jay Earle Miller

The automobile industry is on the verge of a revolution in design which will make tomorrow’s cars radically different from the present models. Amazing new trends in automotive engineering, affecting every American who owns a car, are fascinatingly set forth in this prophetic article.

THE automobile world—after eight or ten years of quiet and orderly development —is on the threshold of a period of radical change and improvement.

That, in a sentence, is the big news on the eve of the 1931 automobile shows.
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The Great Wall of China to be Motor Highway

The plans of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China for converting the great wall into a major motor highway are revealed to the world for the first time in this exclusive story.

THE Great Wall of China, long considered one of the most remarkable engineering feats in the world, may soon become one of the greatest and most unusual motor highways on earth if the plans of the Nationalist government are carried through.
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