FOR THE JOYS OF THE OPEN ROAD

Touring and Runabout Bodies Have Many New Attractions This Season

NEARLY all of us have a touch of the gypsy in our composition somewhere down under the surface.of conventionality and civilization. We have a longing to "follow the Romany patteran" with Kipling's hero to some magical place where the East and the West are one. Perhaps the exigencies of life and business responsibilities clip our wings so that our flight is merely to Babylon, Long Island, instead of the Babylon of the ancients or to Rome, New York, instead of the city upon the seven hills. Just now nearly all of us must perforce confine our wanderings within the borders of the United States. This is probably a blessing even if it is in disguise. In any case, it does not in the least diminish our wanderlust.

THERE has come to be but one way in which we satisfy to the full this craving to rove, be it near or far. America has become so thoroughly motorized that it must do its traveling now and in the future chiefly on rubber-shod wheels. More than a million and a half automobiles will be added during this year to the three and a half million or so now in use. At the beginning of each production season for the last few years the wiseacres have shaken prophetic heads and proclaimed that the saturation point in motor cars had been reached or was only just ahead. But each year the fact of complete distribution of the product has arisen to confound them, and the wisest of prophets would hesitate now to say when America will have produced all the cars she can absorb.

THUS it is beyond peradventure that you will take to the road this year by automobile. You will spend a very large proportion of your time—if you would take the trouble to make a calculation it would astonish you—in running about on short trips here and there, annihilating a few hundred miles for a weekend or taking a tour of a week or two into the mountains or up the coast. And a surprisingly large number of the collective you will make motor pilgrimages to the great American shrines of beauty; the national parks and the vast storehouse of scenery of the West.

The cars to make you happy in these manifold activities are ready. There has been no lack of preparedness among the motor car designers. They have taken time by the forelock, and the result is a multiplicity of models suitable for touring and for warm weather uses which are at once more pleasing to the eye and better adapted to their purpose than has ever been the case before. Some of the many types of open car which will laugh at the miles this summer are shown in these pages. They are prepared to meet the most catholic taste. Here are large and heavy touring cars with plenty of room for seven passengers, having weight enough to scorn almost all inequalities in the road surface and take the fatigue out of even the longest day's run and powerful chasses fitted with smaller bodies which can be relied upon to give a smaller number of occupants an equally restful type of touring. Here are also lighter and very fast runabouts of a sporting type, quite prepared to laugh at distance and make you master of nearly anything else you may meet upon the road.

Continued on page 114

Continued from page 84

IT is really surprising how firmly the idea of the fourpassenger body has taken hold of the imagination of motorists in this country. It would not have been welcomed so heartily had it not had true merit. As a matter of fact, the occasions when more than four persons are to occupy the open car are comparatively few. Some models make provision in a fourpassenger body for an emergency seat above the running board, as has been cleverly done in one of the cars illustrated in this issue. But for the most part four seats are quite enough. By coupling the car more closely than is done in the conventional touring type it is possible to assure these four passengers practically the same degree of riding comfort that two passengers can enjoy in a true roadster. They are all brought between the lines of the axles in this way so that they are able to obtain the maximum of spring comfort. This is mere common sense, and the design has the additional great advantage of sociability; there is a sense of coziness and intimacy about the seating arrangement which is a distinct improvement over old forms.

ONE pleasing detail in connection with this type of body is the deep double cowl, shown in one of this month's pictures. This broad cowl, hinged to the back of the front seat, gives the passengers in the little tonneau a deal of additional protection from wind and weather and adds an attractive note to tiie appearance of the design as a whole. It is one of the small things which are worth doing. The custom designers of motor car bodies are realizing more and more the value of these little touches which have a utility purpose as well as an appeal to the eye. From the body shops they find their way eventually into the stock bodies that the manufacturers use with new models, and thus become a part and parcel of standard automobile design to the great improvement of the latter.

ANOTHER detail of the same JTIL kind is the folding spare seat already briefly referred to. Many of the running board seats of the past have been in the nature of excrescences, useful enough, it is true, but ugly in themselves, especially when not in use. This little seat, however, is so designed that it folds neatly into the side wall of the car body when its services are not required and almost becomes a part of that wall. The seat bottom, which is the only part that shows when it is in the folded position, is painted to match the body itself, of course, and then looks like a side door.

Continued on page 116

Continued from page 114

IN the five-passenger touring car on an imported chassis the front scat back is divided into four compartments. That at the left contains an extra chair, while its companion at the right is a commodious closet or cabinet. Above these two compartments are drawers for small articles. The whole seat back is finished in polished wood and adds greatly to the appearance of body. In another touring model a clever modification of the tonneau windshield brings into play this space which has so often been neglected in the past. A metal-bound plate of glass finds a resting place here when it is not wanted and two metal plates cover the slot in which it is mounted so completely as to conceal its presence entirely. When a secondary' windshield is wanted a few turns of a device not unlike the usual window control brings it up out of concealment and into position. In still another car, a four-passenger baby tonneau, a packing space for suit cases has been provided in the back of the front seat.

One of the most original uses of this space is found in a car which made its first bow this season. A buffet tab'e is concealed in the seat back and may readily be brought into position when desired. Of course, dozens of cars use part of the space to contain the folding extra chairs as they have in other

WINDSHIELDS, both those in the usual position and tonneau shields, show a number of serviceable modifications this year. In some cases V-shaped windshields are mounted in two sections, each of which may be operated independently, thus increasing still further the regulation of breezes, in so far as they apply to one's passengers. An unusual treatment of the supplementary shield mounted on the secondary cowl is to fasten it on two brackets so that it may be moved backward or forward to suit the conditions or the whim of the moment.

ONE of the important matters for all automobile owners which is to be presented for the consideration of the New York Legislature at this session is a bill providing that all horse-drawn vehicles, in addition to automobiles, must carry lights at night visible from the front, rear and both sides. It is the law at present in this state, as it is in a number of neighboring commonwealths, that these wagons must carry a light, but it has been enforced with laxity, and the owners of the wagons have manifested a desire, apparently, to keep only within the letter of the law at best. The lights they carry, when they carry any, are so dim and so badly placed as to be little better than none.