Bernie and Kevin

Nobody ever portrayed Bernie better. Kevin Eason, retiring grand prix correspondent of The Times tells us more in 275 exemplary words than tens of thousands written in books about Bernie. In his valedictory column after 18 years Kevin speaks with the wry indulgence of one jack-the-lad for another.

“At the head of this extraordinary travelling circus was the ringmaster, Bernie Ecclestone. The night we first met, he stretched out his left hand for his customary pseudo-royal handshake, looked me in the eye and said: “Ah, so you’re the one writing all that sh**.”

“From that unnerving start, we were to develop as close a relationship as it is possible to have with a multi-billionaire, Duracell-powered ruler of a global sport. We clashed often, but he always took it on the chin and he could disarm me with a rotten joke or an anecdote.

“Ecclestone carries a reputation as a hard man – and he is in business – but he is paternal about his drivers, personally intervening to get Lewis Hamilton out of McLaren and into Mercedes, for example, or playing backgammon with Sebastian Vettel. Even now, he wells up when you ask him about Stuart Lewis-Evans and Jochen Rindt, two drivers he managed. Both were killed on the track.

Kevin Eason

"For all the bravado, Bernie is soft-hearted, giving millions to charity without a fuss. He loves mischief and there is always a twinkle in his eye. When he makes his pronouncements, you have to separate the facts from the wind-up – not always easy.

“In Russia last year, Vladimir Putin sent an emissary to advise on protocol. At the end of the meeting, Bernie asked Putin’s man for an opinion. “We have been asked to stage a new grand prix,” he said. “In Syria. A new circuit in Damascus. What do you think?” Putin’s man was flabbergasted, until he saw a smile crinkling at the side of Bernie’s mouth. No subject is beyond his cheek.”

This is not the Bernie who once said drivers were expendable, like light bulbs; if one goes out you remove him and screw in another. I recall Bernie’s subtle mischievousness from the 1970s. Hockenheim was still new. I watched two self-important reporters complaining that a new grandstand obstructed their view from the press box. Bernie was still fresh in his ringmaster days, viewed with deep suspicion by old-school press men: “I’ll have it moved for next year,” he reassured the pompous parties. “You see, he’s not bad. He listens to us.” Of course the stand was never moved. Anybody with half an eye could see the twinkle in Bernie’s; stupid people never guessed.

“Then”, writes Eason, “there was Ferrari, commanded by Michael Schumacher but steered by the most glamorous figure in Formula One, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the aristocratic president and chosen one of Enzo, the founder. Di Montezemolo was charismatic beyond belief, his greeting so warm we might have been related.”

Luca Cordera di Montezemolo

I can vouch for di Montezemolo. I had met Enzo, who compelled you to listen to every word. Luca made you think he was listening to you. He wasn’t, of course and he would forget you at once. Charisma won Ferrari championships; you were coerced into Ferrari. Di Montezemolo put Kevin in a 360 sports car at the Fiorano test track. Inevitably Eason spun and was slow but it secured him into the Ferrari family. Michael Scarlett and I drove Ferraris at Fiorano and we didn’t spin and although no match for the track’s test drivers our lap times weren’t at all bad. Then again the older I get the faster I was.

“Standing in the Monaco tunnel watching the old V10-powered cars screaming by was akin to standing next to a Saturn rocket launch; or at the end of the pit straight in Monza before the Italian Grand Prix where drivers came to halt and went through the start procedure. As the engine rumbled and then screeched to about 16,000rpm, the ground shook and the vibrations rippled through the air and into the chest.

“And then there is the best 15 minutes in sport. I have been to Wembley but never stood on the pitch with Manchester United or Arsenal. I have been to Wimbledon finals but not stood next to Andy Murray on court. But I have been to the Monaco Grand Prix and stood on the grid as the cars arrived, shook Jenson Button’s hand to wish him luck, chatted with Red Bull’s Christian Horner, rubbed shoulders with Roger Federer and met Michael Douglas, the Hollywood star.

I aspired to starting grids.. Guild of Motoring Writers chairman 1948 Tommy Wisdom talks to Ferrari engineer-driver Mike Parkes. Picture Eric Dymock

“To work in Formula One is to join the family; I have probably listened to more words this year from Lewis Hamilton than from my wife - and, boy, can she talk. Reporting Formula One is not a job, it is your life and not just because of the 140 or so nights in hotels and the 120,000 miles in the air. We spend weeks together, we eat together, share our jetlag together, quarrel and make up.

“For 18 years, Formula One was my family as I covered the most irritating, silly, politically incorrect, frustrating, brilliant, wild, thrilling, mad sport on the planet. And now it is over. But thanks to The Times - and Bernie - for the ride of a professional lifetime.

I was in the family, once, too. For about 15 years. Believe me Kevin, when you stop, nothing’s ever quite the same.

Here is one I drove earlier

I must declare an interest in reviewing BMC Competitions Department Secrets by Marcus Chambers, Stuart Turner and Peter Browning (Veloce Publishing £24.99). Were I a contestant on Mastermind, my Specialist subjects would include the BMC Competitions Department 1955-1980. I reported on motor sport, wrote about cars, covered rallies, I even ghost-wrote Paddy Hopkirk’s Autosport column in 1967. (He was cross when editor Gregor Grant inserted “begorrahs” to make it sound Irish.) So, this book covers an era when I knew people including the three authors, Chambers less so than the others, yet it still tells me more than I ever knew back then.

“Secrets” in the title is crucial – this is, literally a revelation.

Some secrets, like how well-funded the operation was from the beginning, were naturally well concealed. Comps’ annual budget of £100,000 (that would be £2.6million now), revealed in a memo of 1954 shows how seriously British Motor Corporation took the impending challenge from Standard-Triumph. Nuffield’s Morris, Wolseley, Riley and MG was now merged with Austin and it needed to create an identity. This was vital inside BMC as well as outside. Directors knew their steadfast Austin and Morris loyalists. It was a problem never really solved, made worse when BMC became British Leyland and Triumph engineers fell out with Rover engineers while Jaguar fretted over its identity.

Marcus Chambers set up BMC Comps department. He had managed HRGs at Le Mans and was a solid professional left over from when motor racing was gentlemanly amateur. He could see the potential in Gerald Palmer’s clever but overweight MG Magnette and lobbied for its betterment. Sadly he never carried the weight to effect much change. The heirarchy demanded success with what had become a dreary range of cars. He persevered with the Austin Westminster.

Stuart Turner’s is probably the best bit. It is certainly the best-written and recalls the wily Geoffrey Healey’s tell-tale rev counter used in works driver selection at Silverstone. When aspirants promised they hadn’t gone over 6000rpm Geoff knew which were telling the truth. Stuart was adept at reading the rule book. “Rallymanship” he called it, and applied regulations strictly yet when it came to homologating cars’ technical specifications took interpretation to the limit.

Turner’s skill, a bit like that of Colin Chapman at Lotus, was that unless rules specifically forbade something it was, by default, allowed. He details the Minis’ disqualification after winning first three places on the 1966 Monte Carlo Rally. The French were convinced the cars had somehow been changed for special tests and excluded them on a lighting technicality. Turner’s explanation: “We were perhaps better prepared than our rivals. I’m not sure other teams put out garden thermometers to check if certain sections of the route froze overnight, or were as careful in practising the stages at rally times to best know what conditions would be like in the middle of the night.”

After he took over from Turner, Peter Browning found the French had not forgotten. And maybe not forgiven. In 1968 when the Minis were once again supreme, he went to great lengths to avoid last-minute exclusion. He failed. Any sense of fairness was quickly abandoned in organisers’ determination to defeat the Minis. Scrutineers scarcely glanced at the winning Porsches. Careful, meticulous strict Browning can scarcely conceal his bitterness. Disappointingly he presided over Comps’ declining years yet scored some notable successes. In one of the first events he accomplished outright victory ofMGBs in the 1966 84-Hour Marathon on the Nürburgring. A legacy of the Marathon de la Route Spa-Sofia-Liege after it had become too dangerous to run on crowded public roads outright victory (it was almost 1-2-3) was a testament to the MGB’s utter reliability but also to Browning’s attention to detail against opposition from Porsche, Alan Mann Cortinas and Ferrari.

Not many books reach the heart of a time when our Minis, MGs and Austin-Healeys were earning Gold Medals like automotive Olympian gamesters. Poor BMC may, by hindsight, be a bad memory of interfering governments, indifferent management and arrogant engineers. But it did produce moments of glory often, notably, against the run of play. Not to mention self-serving organisers.

The more you read this book the better it gets, especially when you discover pictures of a car you road tested. EJB 806C (pictured below)  was the Austin-Healey 3000 Timo Makinen and Paul Easter drove to second place in the 1965 RAC Rally (pictured above). And I drove later.

VOLVO AMAZON at 60

Sixty years of the Volvo Amazon. Here’s what I wrote about it in 1961. Designed by 26 year old Jan Wilsgaard, it came out in September 1956 as Volvo’s second postwar model after the PV444. I was The Glasgow Herald’s Special Correspondent; its real motoring correspondent James Brydone McLaren was kind enough to encourage a writer younger than the Volvo’s designer.

It wasn’t called the Amazon when I borrowed G35 (red with a light grey roof looked dashing in 1961) and photographed it at Craig’s house. Known only as a 122 because a Kreidler Amazone moped got the name first, it was Amazon in Nordic markets. My test car was a 122S, which meant Sport. In 1959 the Volvo three-point seat belt became a standard fitting.

I am not inviting comments on my writing style of 55 years ago. It was OK for The Herald then. It would be nice to lighten it a bit, but I haven’t.

MOTORING TODAY. The Glasgow Herald, Friday December 1 1961  From a SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT                                                                                                                           IN these days of rapid technical advancement it is unusual to find a car of conventional design capable not merely of holding its own in world markets but even providing fierce competition to its apparently more up-to-date rivals. Coming from Sweden, the Volvo 122S B.18 saloon (to give it its full, if somewhat unwieldy, title) could very nearly appear to have a dull specification were it not for the knowledge of that country’s reputation for sound engineering. The student of design may see it as a thoroughly conventional motor car but it represents basic and well-tried principles developed to a very high degree.

Orthodox in layout and styling, the Volvo is best con­sidered first as a four or five- seat saloon of exceptionally robust construction. The quality of body finish and paintwork is visibly better than many of its closest rivals, and even the out­ward finish of its mechanical components is commendable.

High Figure

It has a very smooth four-cylinder engine of 1.78 litres which produces in B.18 form 90 b.h.p., a high figure for a power unit of this size. To pro­vide this output it might be thought that the Volvo engine must be highly stressed, and although it reaches fairly high speeds several design features (including a five-bearing crank­shaft) indicate its capacity for the hard work involved.

The interior is businesslike, if perhaps a little strange to British eyes. The upholstery material is plastic and the floor on covering rubber, which is a thoroughly satisfactory arrangement for the practical Swede but less luxurious than his counter­part in this country might expect of a £1372 car. Carpets are, however, offered for a few pounds extra.

Among the comprehensive equipment which is included in the initial cost of the Volvo are safety harness of an unusually good design, screen washers and two-speed wipers, and a very powerful heater and demister unit. Obviously intended for Arctic conditions this instal­lation was found capable of de-icing a thickly coated wind- screen in a matter of moments in conjunction with the radiator blind (another standard item) to help the engine warm up quickly.

Driving the Volvo in town it may be handled in a quiet, dignified manner befitting its unostentatious appearance. At low speeds the engine is docile and quiet and the car easily handled.

Away from the traffic, how­ever, the Volvo accelerates and handles like a real sports car. This quite large saloon has been developed to provide within the frame of a family sized car all the attributes of a thoroughly sporting machine.

The driving seat is fully adjustable for both fore-and-aft movement and backrest rake. Thus drivers, of almost any shape and size may be accom­modated at the big, nearly vertical, steering wheel and given a commanding view of the road and also the instruments, which are situated directly in front of him.

The speedometer is of the horizontal strip variety and satisfactorily readable despite the attentions of the stylist. Dials indicate water temperature and the amount of fuel in the tank, but warning lights serve for an oil pressure gauge and an ammeter. There are both total and trip mileage recorders, and the starter is operated by the ignition switch. The general finish of the facia is good and it is topped by a plastic safety roll.

The Volvo behaves well on the road. It has first-class steering; light, accurate, with a firm self-centring action, and providing a good turning circle (32ft.) for a 14ft. 9in. car. The roadholding is outstanding, there being a modest degree of oversteer and only a little roll on corners.

When pressed to the limit on fast bends the rear wheels break away in a safe, control­lable fashion, although on rough roads the rigidity of the rear axle becomes apparent. The body is quiet even when the suspension is working hard, and the drumming experienced on cobbles does not become objectionable.

Disc brakes on the front wheels give fade-free stopping from the Volvo’s maximum speed which is in the order of 95-100 m.p.h. Brake pedal pressure required is, however, fairly high for a car which may be driven by all members of the family, and, likewise, the clutch (which has a short travel) needs quite a firm push. The handbrake is by the driver’s right hand on the floor and is a good, stout, easily gripped lever.

The gearchange is the only control which seemed less than satisfactory. There is synchro­mesh on all four gears, but engagement of first with the car at rest could be a very difficult business indeed. Reverse has a heavy spring to prevent unin­tentional engagement and is noisy, but all the other ratios are inaudible.

Volvo: Seat Belt pioneers from 1959

Once on the move the gear-change is less unpleasant, but the lever itself is long and requires.an awkward movement of the arm. The synchromesh is powerful and cannot be beaten, and the gear ratios are very well chosen.

Overdrive was fitted to the model tested, and its engage­ment was effected by a slim lever on the right of the steer­ing column which matched the flashing indicator switch on the left. The latter also did service for flashing the headlights.

When the car’s performance is being used to the full the engine noise level increases appreciably. It is mostly air intake roar and not unpleasant to enthusiastic ears. On this latest model, the B.18, it has been subdued in comparison with the earlier slightly smaller-engined car. Mechanical noise is notably absent, although the heater booster fan was quite audible when working to capacity. This is a condition required only very rarely, how­ever, the heater being of such power.

A striking thing about the body construction was the gentle push required to close the doors. They operate in a manner reminiscent of a quality coachbuilt body.

In Britain

One item sorely missed when driving the Volvo fast is a rev counter. Used as a family car (which is really what it is counted as in Sweden) its absence would not be noticed, but the enthusiast using it and taking advantage of the 5000 r.p.m. available would almost certainly welcome an indication of engine speed.

In their efforts to secure the best, Volvo use components manufactured all over Europe. Many are made in Britain and some (including the whole electrical system) in Germany. The result is a car renowned for hard wear and hard work. It is a highly developed, pre­cision-built machine laid out along well-tried, thoroughly proved lines making few con­cessions to fashionable trends merely for their own sake.

It is fast and sporting as international rally successes indicate, as well as being roomy, businesslike, and comfortable, and is creating the kind of reputation which maintains its second-hand value at a much higher figure than many other imported cars.

The Volvo 122S B.18 was supplied for test by Buchanan of Glasgow, European car specialists, of Woodlands Road, Glasgow.

Through with Glass

Keeping Glass’s Guides for reference was either geeky or clever. You never know when you are going to need the price of a Vauxhall Astra of 1995 or what engines Ford Sierras had. The little fat books were full of information but this month the printed ones stop. Yes of course you can look things up digitally but sometimes you don’t exactly know what you don’t know.

Car dealers have been consulting Glass’s small print, often furtively, for 83 years. Now, instead, they will scan their smartphones Ipads and PCs for the same well-researched material in Glass’s Guide App. They’ve been doing so already since the App was set up in 2014 with four times the number of valuations and easy adjustments for mileages and variables, which used to be in tiresome tables. Now they’re just another click.

I’m not sure the App will ever be as smart as the natural born dealers I knew in my (mercifully) brief time in the Glasgow motor trade. They had an instructive feel for car values, like their ancestors had for horses. I knew one who could calculate in the blink of an eye how many Ford Zodiacs, Morris Minors, Jaguars and Austin Somersets he could trade against a Ferrari 250GT. I watched him do it. He always got it right and made a profit.

Ford Zodiac: I've been at some press launches. This is Silverstone when they still dismantled the stands between grands prix.

William Glass published his first Guide in July 1933. Hanns Schwacke did the same in Germany in the 1950s and the business expanded in the 1960s throughout Europe. There were PC versions when Glass’s acquired Editions Professionelles Glass SARL (EPG) in the 1980s and a private equity group took over Glass’s Information Systems in 1998. It merged to form EurotaxGlass’s AG in Freienbach, Switzerland. In 2006 Candover bought the lot for €480 million and renamed it HM Capital.

William Glass was born in Scotland in 1881and Rupert Pontin, director of valuations describes him as an engineer and believes he would have approved of the App. Glass was, says Pontin, “… a notable inventor who created the portable hydraulic jack, the electric switch-off kettle and the self-filling fountain pen,” Jack, kettle and fountain-pen notwithstanding I am less sure of the assertion that he also invented a mechanism for firing a machine gun through a rotating aircraft propeller. Franz Schneider Raymond Saulnier, Fokker, Scarff-Dibrovski, Sopwith-Kauper, George Constantinesco and even Marc Birkigt of the Hispano-Suiza engined SPADs would be among many to take issue with that. Swiss-born Schneider, who worked with Nieuport published this patent (below) in the German Flugsport in 1914 when Glass was 33.

Triumph TR weekend

Found a car I had quite forgotten and another I had merely overlooked at the TR Register’s convivial International Weekend. I had to look them up The Story of Triumph Sports Cars (Motor Racing Publications 1973) by Graham Robson. The Register’s Honorary President, course commentator at Lincolnshire showground, Robson knows all.

The TR with a wide grille was not one of the 3,331 TR3Bs produced in 1961-1962 for America with 2.0 and 2.2litre engines. They looked much like TR3As. This LNJ 58 was a replica of two prototypes made by Standard-Triumph’s development department on a wide-track TR4 chassis. This meant it had fatter wings and with rack and pinion steering, according to Robson, they turned out better cars than expected. “One, painted and trimmed in black and bearing the obvious nickname ‘Black Beta’ performed and handled like no TR ever before, for it had the 2.2litre engine and a variety of extra touches. Beta was a viable project for some time, particularly as it would involve only minimal tooling expense, and it was suggested that it might continue alongside a newly styled TR4 to give American dealers the best of both worlds.”

Both prototypes, Graham tells me, survive in course of reconstruction. It must have been an exciting time at Standard-Triumph, which was usually strapped for cash but had sold its profitable tractor-making subsidiary, providing cash for new models and a competition programme. That all led to success at Le Mans, the twin-cam “Sabrina” (don’t ask) engine and indirectly to the relationship with Vignale and Giovanni Michelotti.

The result of that, besides the later Triumph Herald’s shape, was the Italia on a TR3A chassis, put into limited production by Vignale between 1959 and 1963. The prototype had a drooping front and concealed headlights but the one shown in the Lincoln concours had the well-proportioned and elegant regular steel coupe body. It was an expensive production and only a few were ever brought to Britain. This Graham Andrews car, intriguingly with Italian registration 43387 (Torino) and British UYS (Glasgow) has the customary crossed flags on the tail. Never sure what they meant, the red cross is the nautical V, which might be Vignale but the blue-and-white S is anybody’s guess.

The Register invited other Triumph and Standard models on Sunday. Triumph shapes have generally aged well although I missed an example of Walter Belgrove’s wonderful “waterfall” grilles on a 1930s Dolomite. His essentially “budget” plain-sided TR2, like so many sports cars of the time owed something to the 1940 Mille Miglia BMW (below). From the Jaguar XK120 on, they all had smooth flowing wings and rounded prows. Belgrove’s achievement was to draw up a shape that could be mass produced with as few double-curvatures in the pressings as possible. It was essentially minimalist yet it worked.

Belgrove did not have a lot to do with the superb “razor-edge” Triumph 1800, later Renown, saloon. That was the work of Mulliner and Frank Callaby. You no sooner look for something in a Robson book that you find something else and in no time you are compelled to read through the whole thing. I discovered that much of the 1947 voluptuous Roadster was also the work of Callaby. There was one at Lincoln. The world’s last production car with a dickey seat.

I was familiar with lots of TR2s. I was even in MGG 29 when Ronnie Abbott had one of his accidents, fortunately without injury to all three of us in it at the time. The TR Register assured me that another I drove remains on its books. This is me in the passenger seat of Heather Fleming’s treasured OGB800.

DRIVING FULL CIRCLE

DRIVING FULL CIRCLE

Mercedes-Benz AMG GT R

They’re reinventing four wheel steering. It’s never really been away. A couple of dozen cars currently have it. Mercedes-Benz, one of its pioneers, is to replace the control arms of the AMG GT R’s rear axle with electro-mechanical actuators, which turn the rear wheels up to 1.5 degrees. Up to 100kph they point the opposite way to the fronts, above that they point the same way.

Freddie Dixon put four wheel steering on a racing car in 1935 and in 1938, when Hitler opened the Berlin Motor Show, Mercedes-Benz had it on the Gelandewagen. (Picture below by Stahlkocher) I reported in the Sunday Times Magazine of 8 December 1985 DRIVING COMES FULL CIRCLE. “Now that four-wheel drive is established, the next big development in car technol­ogy is likely to be four-wheel steering. At last month’s Tokyo Motor Show every major Japanese manufacturer had cars that steered through the back wheels as well as the fronts. Micro-electronics make them speed-sensitive, so the degree of rear-steer is less, say, for chang­ing lanes on a motorway than it is for moving the car sideways into a parking slot. Most of those shown at Tokyo were still at the concept stage, but Nissan has a rear-steer unit actu­ally in production and already offered as an option on Skylines for the Japanese home market. Nissan claims it im­proves the grip of the rear tyres by up to 70 per cent.”

It wasn’t long before Honda was making a Prelude that, “You could drive a long way without noticing the rear-wheel steer­ing. But you would be insen­sitive not to be aware of the taxi-like turning circle and the responsive roll-free cornering.” In The Sunday Times Motoring 6 September 1987 STEERING CLEAR OF THE COMPETITION “The world's first production ear in which all four wheels do the steering will be on view at the Frankfurt motor show which opens on Wednesday and will come onto the UK market next month at a cost of £14,100. Steering an extra set of wheels might sound like a complication we could do without — to be best left per­haps to dumper trucks and combine harvesters. That would be to deny the advan­tages of easier parking and significantly steadier behav­iour on the motorway. The mechanism that achieves it is more ingenious than com­plicated, and relatively in­expensive.

The £3000 difference be­tween the four-wheel steer (4WS) 2.0i-l6 Prelude and the similar EX version is mostly accounted for by the 16-valve (as opposed to 12-valve) en­gine and the more handsome specification. In West Ger­many it only costs an extra £640.

“Selling us something we did not even know we wanted is a singular skill of Japanese marketing. Yet there is a strong technical rationale for augmenting the front wheel steering.

Turning conventional steer­ing does not yank the front of the car immediately sideways. Instead the car yaws, that is to say it tends to lean over while turning, the back wheels following the change of direc­tion a moment later.

“It is this time lag that rear- wheel steering is designed to fill. If the steering wheel is turned more than a third or so, the back wheels deflect in the same direction as the front so the car moves almost bodily sideways. I tried it on a closed-off section of autobahn where a lane-change manoeuvre had been laid out. A con­ventional two-wheel steer car leans towards the outside of the swerve. A four-wheel steerer re­mains flat and level, enhan­cing control, feeling more precise and less fussy. It look a little getting used to. On the first few tries at 80kph I sent cones spinning. A few runs later, the skill was easily mas­tered at more than 100kph by leaving a little more clearance.

“Main road cornering has a similar safe feel. The rear wheels do not steer to the same degree as those at the front, a mere 1.5 degrees. It is sufficient for them to alter course only slightly to achieve the flatter, steadier movement that gives the Prelude a secure stance. The corollary of better cornering is improved manoeuvrability at parking speeds. Setting up the back car into a gap its own length has been an inventor's pipe dream for generations. Honda four-wheel steering is not quite like that.

“After the first one-third of a turn of the steering wheel, the rear steering changes direc­tion. Instead of defecting the same way as the fronts, the back wheels counter-steer up to 5.3 degrees, sufficient to diminish the turning circle by a full metre to 9.6 metres. Four-wheel steering is the most radical development for cars since four-wheel drive. If there are disadvantages, they are not apparent so far. Only some 3,000 Preludes will be sold in Britain this year. It is an extremely well- proportioned two-door. 2+2 with a small back seat (despite more space this year), engineered to very high stan­dards. “

Motor Sport reported the Berlin Motor Show in March 1938. GERMANY’S CARS ON PARADE. Herr Hitler opens a show of technical novelties: “Another novelty on the Mercedes stand was the Gelandewagen, or "estate car." This would appeal greatly to British trials enthusiasts, as it has not only four-wheel-drive, but four-wheel-steering as well! Furthermore, the car can be driven either with front steering and rear drive, in the normal fashion, or with front steering and the drive on all four wheels, or with all four wheels both driving and steering. The changes in the various mechanisms may be effected easily from the driver's seat by means of two extra levers. The car, which has a 2-litre 4-cylinder engine, has a 5-speed gearbox, in which bottom gear is in the neighbourhood of 40 to 1. It has a maximum speed of about 53mph. The Gelandewagen, as its name implies, is designed for travelling about over very rough surfaces, as for agricultural or hunting purposes, or for military use. All four wheels are independently sprung, and, as a matter of fact, both front and rear axles are identical, except that one faces forward and the other backward. The steering linkages, the differentials, the means of taking the drive, and the suspension systems are the same in both cases. With the four wheel-steering in use, the Gelandewagen can turn round in a circle of only 7 metres.”

Frederick William Dixon (1892-1956) designed a racing motorcycle with a banking sidecar and was successful on two, three and four wheels, winning two BRDC Gold Stars. At the age of 40 he also invented an all-wheel control system. In1932 he led the Ulster TT for four hours before crashing his self-assembled Riley through a hedge. His engineering became the stuff of legend for racing driver APR Rolt, who encouraged work on four-wheel drive, forming a partnership to exploit it, which later became Harry Ferguson Research when the Belfast tractor millionaire took an interest. By 1945 Dixon’s logical mind had gone beyond merely four-wheel drive and he developed and built an astonishing car on which each wheel was independently sprung, driven, braked and steered.

The front and rear axles pivoted centrally with a pull-rod mechanisms drawing the inner wheels closer and pressing the outer ones apart to follow through a comer. It was ingenious but not, alas, a success. Lacking modern hydraulics the prototype, through its tendency to navigate sideways, quickly earned itself the nickname of The Crab and was soon abandoned.