Page:Motors and motor-driving (1902).djvu/65

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THE CHOICE OF A MOTOR
39

has brought almost every motor manufacturer to my side. One after another the Continental makers have copied the shape and design of the Panhard carriages, which are in most respects similar to those of the English and German Daimlers. Among the many advantages of this type of engine is that it is easy to get at, is simple in construction, understood by more mechanics than any other engine except perhaps the De Dion in France, and so lasting in quality that Mr. Evelyn Ellis, who brought the first four-horse motor to this country in 1894, still has it, though it now does duty as a fire-engine.[1] My own six-horse Panhard, which was one of the earliest of that type, is as good

The English Daimler Company's 22 h.-p. Car[2]


to-day as it was in 1896, and my six-horse Daimler, though only two years old, has done an enormous amount of rough work, and is in every respect as good as on the day it was made. My steam-engines have given me some trouble, though improvements are being devised with great rapidity; but in the smaller types the necessity of taking water, nominally every fifty miles but in reality much oftener than that, their fragility of construction and difficulty of management in a high wind, render them at present only useful to those who thoroughly enjoy a mechanical task.

  1. See the illustration in Chapter I.
  2. The illustrations in this chapter are given simply to represent some of the types of cars now in use.