Star Motor Car: 1,000 Miles Trial : London to Edinburgh and Back 1900 : Motoring

Star Motor Car: 1,000 Miles Trial 1900

This facsimile reprint is a volume in the Orbach & Chambers Motor Reprint Series

Published by Orbach & Chambers Ltd, 1970. Large softcover book, A4 size, 64 pages, illustrated.

CONDITION
A very good clean copy. Seems very scarce as could find no other copies available for sale at the time of listing this one.

ABOUT THE 1,000 MILES TRIAL 1900
At the beginning of the 20th century motoring was finally just starting to catch on in Britain. A small number of British manufacturers were becoming established, forming the nucleus of what would soon become a major industry. Yet throughout the country people remained sceptical about the impact of the motor car whilst many more had yet to actually see one of the machines for themselves. Against this background a group of leading motorists proposed an event that would test the current crop of motor cars whilst allowing a large slice of the population to see what all the fuss was about, the Thousand Mile Trial.

Organised by the Automobile Club of Great Britain & Ireland (forerunner of the Royal Automobile Club) the Thousand Mile Trial started in London  on 23rd April and followed a route that included Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Carlisle, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds and Nottingham before returning to the capital on 12th May. For many ordinary people in the Midlands and North it would be their first encounter with the motor car. At various locations along the route the entrants and their machines were tested in a speed trial and a number of hill-climbs.

Entries were divided in to two classes; manufacturers and private owners. Manufacturers entries included cars from Wolseley, Lanchester, De Dion Bouton, Daimler, Gladiator and the Motor Manufacturing Co (MMC) as well as quadricycles and tricycles from Ariel. The list of drivers was effectively a ‘Who’s Who’ of the leading motorists of the time including such well-known names as C.S. Rolls, Claude Johnson, S. F. Edge, Mark Mayhew, J.D. Siddeley, Montague Grahame-White and Henry Hewetson.

(Loc: Desk; Top shelf left )