Personality Problems of the Motor Car

By Leonard Wibberley

First published March 8th, 1959

8/31/2018

NOTE: Leonard Wibberley, Los Angeles newspaperman turned author, finds automobiles a subject of lifelong fascination. Despite periods of residence in his native Ireland, later in England, and still later in the British West Indies, he continues to regard the English and European car as “foreign.”

His whimsical novels often poke fun at all things mechanical. As a prolific producer of books for juveniles, he has found great success with the subject of sports car racing. Under the name Patrick O’Connor, he has produced a fast-selling series concerning an All-American Woody Hartford and his successes at racing the fictional Italian-built Black Tiger.

Perhaps the world’s most inept mechanic, Wibberley prides himself on the complete mastery of the electric fuel pump, a point of amazing frailty on his current motorcar, a Rover 75. He is currently intrigued by the sleekness of the Chrysler-powered and French-constructed Facel Vega and swears that his next success in authorship will concern on of these rolling delicacies.

YEARS ago when the nations of Europe had solemnly negotiated a perpetual peace treaty at Locarno and when the news from America was concerned largely with tile number of live goldfish swallowed by students at Princeton University, my brother Tom came roaring up the driveway in a low-slung little car with wire wheels and an evil look. He switched off the engine and climbed out with all the nonchalance of Lindbergh arriving at Le Bourget.

My brother Tom was wearing a linen flying helmet, whipcord riding breeches and a leather jacket.

“She’ll do 70 in top cog,” he said. “Stick around, Skinny, and I’ll take you for a spin.”

“What is it?” I asked, my heart thumping with glory.

“Riley sports,” said my brother Tom. “Just bought it.

It was at this moment that I lost my heart to what we call over here “foreign cars.” The Riley Sports was about as foreign looking a car as I ever hoped to see, even though it was made in England, my home country. It had knock-on wheel hubs, magneto ignition and a supercharger operated by a switch from the dashboard. It bad a rev counter and bucket seat with pneumatic cushions and a fender line with the grace of Greek statuary. The whole body was covered with crocodile leather.

There were two metal plaques on the back. One said sternly, “Four Wheel Brakes,” and the other jauntily, “Drive on, Big Boy. Hell Ain’t Half Full.”

To be in any way associated with such a car was to be admitted to the Hall of Heroes and a taste of true glory. To be brother of the man who owned such a car was like becoming, on the moment, Robin Hood, Tamerlane, Charles the Hammer, Hereward the Wake, the Captal de Bach and Rory O’Connor, last King of Ireland, all rolled in one.

I got in and discovered to my great delight that the bucket seat was so near the floor I couldn’t see out the windscreen. Tom switched on the ignition and the little electric fuel pump made the most delicate “tick, tick, tick” I have ever heard. At that moment, my mother ran out.

She was wiping her hands in her apron partly because she was baking pies and partly because of anxiety.

“‘You’re not going to take that boy in that car, are you?” she said.

Tom looked at me and grinned.

“Yes,” he replied. “I am. He’s got to become a man some day.” I adored him in that moment and I have adored him ever since.

It was a wonderful ride. We did 55 up Pierne’s Folly where the family Model A Ford slogged along at 20, and we touched 60 in the short stretch leading over the Hampshire Downs to Sparshot. We took corners as if we were on rails, and I once got to operate the supercharger when we passed a gentleman in plus fours who was chuffing along in an elderly Darracq.

I lost my heart completely and for all time to “foreign cars.”

I have owned a number of them and I sometimes wonder what makes me buy them. I started with an ancient Lancia, went to a Morgan Trike, then a tiny Renault and more recently a Volkswagen, Morris Oxford, Mark V Jaguar, and Rover 75.

Recently in London I met a Spanish gentleman in the lounge of the Cumberland who owned one of the world’s few Pegasos. Before much conversation had elapsed, we swapped cars and I spent a glorious afternoon sporting about London in the Pegaso while he trundled down to Dover in my Rover. We sat around until 3 in the morning discussing our cars as I suppose the chivalry of medieval France sat around talking about their horses.

We must conclude, I believe, that the fascination of all offbeat automobiles is precisely the fact that they are offbeat. They have, each of them, a separate, individual personality.

There are those whose approach to the automobile is mechanical They like to talk about displacement torque, compression ratios and brake horsepower. Occasionally I talk about those things myself although I haven’t the faintest idea what is under discussion.

These are just good chewy words to produce when someone has taken the head off a Jaguar or an MG and the bare electric light bulbs are gleaming on the silver tools and there’s the smell of oil and tobacco in the air and a man can get good and dirty without somebody telling him he ought to change his shirt and be careful not to wipe his hands on his pants.

But for me, I embrace the personality of the car itself, its virtues and its foibles, its loyalty and its confounded temperament.

Take my little Renault. It preferred to be addressed in French. Continued conversation in English depressed its Gallic heart and set it moping for the lovely valley of the Loire and the splendid sweep of the Gironde through the noblest vineyards of the world.

When it flagged upon a hill, I knew that it was not short on power but short on spirit. I would cry, out, “Courage, mon complain. On me dit que le Diable est mort.” (“Courage, comrade. They tell me the Devil is dead"), and it would immediately sweep up the hill with all the verve of the Jacquerie at the storming of the Bastille.

English cars prefer a quieter approach. Recently I had occasion to overhaul the carburetors on my Rover and when I had put them together and switched on the ignition I was treated to a most splendid spectacle. Fountains of crystal clear gasoline, beautiful to behold, jetted from every conceivable part—a sight in its own way quite as entrancing as the play of the fountains at Versailles.

When I had enjoyed this lovely display for a minute or two, I switched off the ignition and addressed myself to Rover.

“I hardly think you are doing Britain any good, old boy, carrying on like this,” I said in a modest voice.

Having admonished Rover by an appeal to decency, I then tightened up whatever nuts and screws I could and switched on the ignition again. Everything went splendidly. The fountain was reduced to a mere dribble over which I refused to fuss and Rover has been working quietly and unassumingly ever since.

There are now five children in my family, and my wife has developed a habit of sitting in a corner of the living room and mumbling about a station wagon. It appears, though I had not noticed this before, that now when we go for a drive she has two babies in her lap.

But I know she cannot possibly be serious about a station wagon, though Rover is perhaps getting a mite small. I have nothing against station wagons other than that they do not appeal to me. On the other band, there is the problem of getting the two babies (plus necessary diapers) out of my wife’s lap when we go for a drive en famille.

But I think I have the solution. I have heard of a Rolls Royce shooting brake, the English version of a station wagon, of course. It has a gun rack in the back and two jump seats for dogs. These would do splendidly for the youngsters. It is to be had cheaply, this Rolls Royce, the owner being on his way to South America where he has heard of a mountain which the British have not yet climbed.

Of course, added to the coat of the car will be the price of a pair of pigskin gloves. One cannot drive a Rolls without suitable gloves.

New Release Alert:

After years of being out of print, the complete Black Tiger Adventures in Racing are now available on Kindle!

Written by racing enthusiast Leonard Wibberley (author of The Mouse that Roared) under the pen name Patrick O'Connor, The Black Tiger Series transports the reader back to a golden age of both racing and American life to tell timeless stories of courage, teamwork, glory, heartbreak, and the human condition. "Crackles with the thrill of racing."—The New York Times THE BLACK TIGER BOOK SERIES Book 1: The Black Tiger Book 2: Mexican Road Race Book 3: Black Tiger at Le Mans Book 4: Black Tiger at Bonneville Book 5: Black Tiger at Indianapolis Book 6: A Car Called Camellia