New Thrills from Freak Spills of Auto Ball
by ED HARLAN GIBSON
SPILLS! Thrills! Smashups! Constant danger. Daredevil drivers strapped in odd looking, speeding cars, bouncing a huge ball about the race track.
Spills? Sure there’s one! Dust clouds rise as a little car does a crashing “barrel-roll.” Then another, farther up the track, fairly leaps into space as it turns over. The air about the grandstand has the tainted odor of burning rubber from spinning wheels—wheels spinning first back and then forward. Cars skid, slide about, swap ends like a wild bucking broncho.
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BEWARE The Gasoline DOPE Racket
“FIVE More Miles per Gallon!” “Removes Carbon!” “Stops Oil Pumping!” “More Power with Pep Tablets!”
When you see signs like these, stop, look and beware! Magic fuel elixirs and cure-all compounds that are sold in tablet, powder, pill or capsule form to motorists comprise a wide-spread highway racket. There are hundreds of such preparations on the market that you can buy for a dime or a dollar, but few of them are any good. Some are actually harmful to motors.
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Largest Car Replaces the Kings ‘Orses
KING GEORGE and Queen Mary of England—whose state and ceremonial appearances for a quarter of a century have been made in the traditional horse-drawn -carriage—have become motor minded. For the first time in history the king and queen are making their state appearances by car.
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Washing Machine Motor Drives Midget Auto 12 M.P.H.
IT MIGHT be small and funny looking but it goes places, does the little midget car built by Stanley McCrary, of Seattle, Washington.
In building his somewhat diminutive auto, Stanley waylaid an old washing machine and made away with its motor. When he came to the problem of providing a clutch and steering gear, he simply made them in his own workshop. As to the gas tank, well you can see for yourself in the photo at the left.
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Will Gyroscopic Wheel Shatter Speed Records?
DOWN the track of a motor speedway a wheel 14 feet high whirls at such a dizzy speed that racing automobiles traveling at top speed—115 miles an hour—seem almost to stand still. So fast does the giant wheel travel that the details of its design can scarcely be distinguished. This is a possibility prophesied by Prof. E. J. Christie, of Marion, Ohio, for an amazing gyroscopic unicycle of his invention, now being constructed in Philadelphia, Pa. The 2400-pound 14-foot model of the speed wheel is almost ready for a trial spin and Christie confidently predicts that it will develop a speed of at least 250, and possibly 400 miles an hour!
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AUTO BODIES MADE OF FABRIC END SQUEAKS AND RATTLES
Fabric, which holds its shape, is durable and is washed or dusted easily, is being employed successfully in place of metal in the bodies of a French automobile, celebrated for its silent-running qualities. With the car windows, held in rubber grooves, and the panels manufactured of the leatherlike material, squeaks and rattling common to bodies of steel construction are said to be entirely removed.
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