British Car Trials on The Autobahn: Tests Such As These | British Pathé
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 เม.ย. 2014
- The British Motor Corporation (BMC) demonstrates how they tests their cars (Austin A50, Morris Minor, Morris Oxford) by racing them down the German Autobahn and stopping for a compulsory cup of tea in this remarkable footage from the 1950's. "If you want to know how tough a car's engine is, one way to find out is to try flogging it to death, or in more technical terms, testing it to destruction"
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(FILM ID:2271.04)
Begins with the BMC logo and the subtitle: "Amazing Proving Trials for British Motor Corporation Engines."
Aerial shots of cars driving fast on a motorway. "If you want to know how tough a car's engine is, one way to find out is to try flogging it to death, or in more technical terms, testing it to destruction" states the narrator. BMC invite the viewer to observe how they test their cars.
Interior of an Austin A50. C/U of the steering wheel as a man drives on a German Autobahn. Normal family saloons will be driven for 20,000 miles at an average speed of over a mile a minute. Other cars being tested are seen from the driver's perspective (including a Morris Minor.) C/U of the front of the Austin as it travels along. C/U of front of Morris Minor. The Austin A35 is also seen. Various shots of the cars driving along the motorway. One of the cars pulls into a petrol station. The Morris Oxford is also under trial. Technical details about the compression ratios of the cars are given. Cars are reversed into parking spaces. This is perhaps more like a motorway service station than a mere petrol station. Driver gets out of Morris Minor and pours petrol into the tank trough a funnel. The other drivers fill up with petrol (not from the pumps - from their own cans.) C/U of one of the drivers checking his oil. Two of the drivers beckon another two into the service station for a cup of tea. Panning shot of the sign above the restaurant or cafe.
C/U of the speedometer. Driver toots his horn. C/U of the front wheel of one of the cars turning. More shots from inside the car and aerial shots of the cars. It begins to rain and the windscreen wipers are set in motion. C/U of one the drivers. Drivers pull into a petrol station.
Cars are filled with petrol, checks are made, drivers make notes. The cars move off again. More driving shots, narrator gives technical details. Special gauges are installed in each car to show oil and water temperature and axle and under bonnet temperature. C/U of the gauges.
Stuttgart, the cars pull in after 20,000 miles "every one of them is still going strong...destruction is still quite a long way off." Views of city streets from inside car. Cars pull into a garage where mechanics inspect their engines for wear and tear. The drivers propose that they try another 5,000 miles "to see if they can take that too". Various shots of mechanics performing tests and nice arty shot of the reflection of the garage in a shiny hubcap. C/U of two mechanics working under the bonnet of a Morris Minor.
C/U of bonnet of Morris being washed. M/S showing man with a hose rinsing the car. The cars pull out of the garage and drive off. They pass Stuttgart landmarks. C/U of instrument panel. The cars all manage the extra 5,000 with flying colours. More driving shots.
"Tests like these are not only a vindication of the designers' skill, but also one more example of the thoroughness with which the BMC test their cars before handing them over to the public. A thoroughness which inspires confidence."
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Legend has it that they are still driving up and down the autobahn to this day, in search of a decent cup of tea
There’s no decent tea. Just the smell of the indium bearings.
They did say about 20k miles was the expected lifespan of the engine bearing.
I lived in Germany when this film was made. My dad was in the US Army. Even as a child I remember that the roads had very little traffic on them. Most Europeans still used mass transit. I remember we went on a road trip to Austria in 1959 and we saw an entire family riding a motorcycle with a sidecar attached. Father was driving, mother behind him and two kids in the sidecar. Very efficient, but very cold as well.
I learned to drive in one of those split screen Minors. It had semaphore turn signals, the little lighted arm that came out of each door column. The ones in the film had blinkers.
1950s Top Gear :') Great bit of film footage thanks for sharing.
How on earth did we judge those speeds accurately with those wavering speedomters?
Those BMC were tough old cars. Many lasting way beyond their intended useful years in Jamaica. Its their finicky doors that were annoying, 'do not slam' was a regular warning written or told by the driver.
The narrator said the the autobahn was busy?? He wants to see it in our time. 😄
Absolutely Spiffing 😜
I totally enjoyed that. Great Cars. Great Engineering.
They don't make them like that anymore.
I think they all rusted away before the trial was over!
A glorious future lies a ahead for the British car industry.
r/agedlikemilk
But you don't have a " glorious motor industry anymore" I started work as an apprentice mechanic my second car was an a50 as I started work 87% of new cars sold in new zealand were British in 1969 by 1971 it wS down to 60% as people discovered the japanese cars were more reliable better handling, better braking more economical AND cheaper, by 1975 the bits had dropped to 40% because it was the same old same old poorly build, badly finished, still unreliable , the death knell came along as the ugly bmc finally driowned😊
I´ve never seen such an empty Autobahn my whole life even in the first Petrol Crisis.
4:30
They must have looked cheap pulling into petrol stations and using their own gas. I wonder if they took their own food into restaurants ?
Rob Mackenzie ... and their own scissors into a barber shop ...
Of course,no foriegn muck
Rob Mackenzie
Controlled fuel and fuel amounts. Nothing to do with being 'cheap.
Probably if BMC would be still existing they would run their tests even today on german Autobahn, as they got fuel in Germany that is not available due to missing lorry drivers in GB. Sorry for my english humour. But really a nice and odd footage you present here.
Foreign muck wouldn't agree with them.
Why did times have to change...
Would have loved to have been around in these black and white days when everyone spoke like Mr Cholmondley Warner! 🤣
I recall the time that a guy in a Cambridge filled up at a service station on the motorway and drove off without paying. Several wrecked Range Rovers later he ran out of petrol and they finally caught him!
I've driven all these cars!
There's my Austin A30 there, well not that exact one.
Superb
I would love a job like that, those cars were great
1:40-1:53 It beggars belief that they expected only 20,000 miles out of these engines before they'd be clapped out.
In the 1960 s I had a Austin A50 and it would do 80mph just like the one on the video. Very comfortable with big red leather seats. Column gear change rather slow ! I put a MG head on it with ten thousand planed off which improved miles per gallon and increased acceleration. I had a Morris Minor before that and did many miles in that with tool box, spare oil, water etc !
Back when the second hand car cost less than a tank of petrol today.
I had an A50 in the sixties that did 19 mpg knocking abut locally but up to 46 mpg after I fitted a vacuum gage and drove carefully
My favourite
Autobahn driving needed an oil cooler. English cars were not designed for long constant speeds then. Lead Indium bearings and later oils were an improvement but not the total answer. VW beetles all had oil coolers for autobahn use.
Very good roads!!
The good old days!
Driving past a bombed out building at 8:09?
In the days before the customer was expected to do the testing!
I love how the opened windos worked as hand rests in those days 😂
84 Octane..... no wonder they can't manage 80 MPH
Not a good ad for the Minor 1000 to see the back end bouncing around all the time. It looked very unstable.
It's amazing to see how the world looked like in 2014
Over 60 MPH eh. Must have been terrifying
How on earth did a Morrie pass a Beetle, and using 84 octane?!
The answer is with ease.
Range anxiety was invented from the vw beetle. But it wasn't running out of petrol or battery, it was running out of engine,,,,,,, BANG !!!!
Cracks me up every time. 😂
All without seat belts!
"Heavy volume of traffic" Ha Ha.
Mile a minute description 🤣
tailgating at 80 with those brakes and no seatbelt !!! rather them than me
jolly hockey sticks old boy,the gerries didnt know what hit them ha ha!
Would you like a cigarette with your drive, of course I do, it is the 50s.
Tailgating is dangerous and leads to pulling your partners along.
84 octane petrol. 8-3 compression ration. 900 cc. 😂
Nice infomercial. But in reality this test could have been done on a factory dyno.
As a real life driving test it was a silly undertaking. An engine wears the fastest directly after a cold start. So, stop&start city traffic would have been a way better test. Also for brakes and suspention.
But hey, those guys got a nice company paid trip out of it, i guess.
Because filming it produced a great advert for the cars...
What happened when your indium bearings wore out at 20,000miles ??????
They didn't wear out in normal driving , these were tests to driven to destruction as said in the beginning, to think there are still some of these models on the road today, more then can be said for today's modern tin cans with trail engines that start playing up all too soon. Engines etc were not built to the fine tolerances we have today.i still have a 1960 Morris with a huge 948cc engine runs like a swiss watch. Just needs more frequent oil and filter changes then today.
All for a bit of nostalgia, but sorry, this just shows how rubbish the technology of the 50's really was (BMC's at least). 20-25k "highway" miles (with a warm & lubricated motor) , an oil change every 4k miles (every Sunday was "maintenance" day) and basically a full engine rebuild was in order (and probably 2 or 3 sets of cross-ply tyres to boot).
I guess at least the brakes would still have been in good order.............no wait 20,000 miles at 200miles per tank that's at least 100 stops to refuel.....add in 2 sets of shoes, machined drums and 4 brake cylinders as well........oh and a weekly carby rebuild while you're at it, got to make sure we extract all 20-35kw from these performance powerhouses.
ahh, the good old Brit cars
I had a Morris Oxford series V with a 1489 cc engine. With regular oil changes, it covered 140,000 miles. Still going strong when I passed it to a friend. Excellent engines, good cars.
Put it into context... Ford were still building cars with side valve engines, three speed gearboxes and transverse leaf springs at the time...
@@neilevans8940 They were more comfortable and usually faster than the BMCs of the era. Ford even helped pioneer the automatic transmission with their Cruise-O-Matic in the early fifties.
@@baileyharrison1030 You're obviously talking Ford USA here as in the UK from 1963 the vast majority of Fords with auto gearboxes used the Borg Warner 'box. Earlier UK Fords used the Hobbs Mecha-Matic... I know a bit about them as I own the surviving factory prototype Hobbs Auto A35...
Cars made today wouldn't last like that it's all run by computers
Meanwhile our American cousins were smoking around in v8s
Back when we had all the industrial capacity.
Only a few years after WW2 one of the victors has no choice but to use the excellent road infrastructure of its thoroughly defeated enemy to tests its cars, already inferior to those produced by that former enemy. What's the word again? Wirtschaftswunder?
Yes, because Beetles, old Opels and Audis.never rotted away..... Why do you think Porsche and Audi turned to galvanised bodies? Then we have the ultra reliable NSU RO80 (I'll ignore the swing axle Prinz models and dangerous handling), moving forward they've really improved, unstable A class and Audi A1, Audi TT first gen with dodgy aerodynamics, trailing arm old 5 series with dubious rear end grip. Don't mention the Porsche IMS or liner problems. Still, now Mercedes are using Renault engines I'm sure they'll be OK. Ps, I actually like German cars but have spent my life driving and fixing them so I'm not blinkered to their many faults.
Destruction would have been stop start town driving choke on choke off col hot cold hot cold hot every day not an easy drive at 60 mph 😂
I didn’t realise they could do 60 mph.
Even the tiny A30 could average over that for 24 hours plus! Stick a contemporary blower on them and you might be surprised. Look at them racing at Goodwood.
Indian bearings. What on earth is he talking about? I was born in 1950 and this ridiculous voice was only heard on radio and television, until the public fell over laughing… crap cars by the way, my mother had a morris 1000 which wasn’t bad at all.
I think he said Indium. Atomic number 49
@@jacobmoses3712 Just looked that up and it was used to coat bearings apparently. You learn something new every day!
I believe it's called the BBC voice.
But what I find funny is America and Australia did a similar silly voice.
Straight out of " Monty Python "
The Silly Voice Society.
For really big occasions there was Bob Danvers-Walker commentry. I remember him saying of a tiger that was not shot by the Duke of Edinburgh (he got a whitlow finger they said) that it "was not royally slain".
There.wer.loads.of.austins.on.the.road.qen.i.was.little.