MGapr11 Bulletin no 60 - The Triple-M Register

the Bulletin on the two earliest Yearbooks still in stock,1979 and 1988/9. These are available for £5 for the pair, pluspostage.Beware, you can easily pay two or three times the pricesquoted above from Ebay traders!Full Triple-M Register Library details are on the website, orwrite to Peter Hemmings, Folly Farm, Thornford Road, HeadleyRG19 8AH.“What the ex-Monte Carlo NA is like to drive”By Mike AllisonI have been driving JB3852, or NA0307, to give it its maker’snumber, for almost fifty years now, and am often asked aboutwhat it is like to drive. It is now quite an old car, and performanceof all cars has gradually improved, while by the nature ofthings that of the NA remains much the same as ever, so thatit is fair to say that it no longer has what could be termed a“shattering” performance.So one has to be aware of the sort of performance contemporarycars had. Even before that, one has to appreciate thatpeople actually drove quite slowly in 1935. Several of thegeneration before me would not use bottom gear, but start offin second, changing to top at around 15/20 mph, and then stayin top until forced to stop! My own father seldom drove atspeeds in excess of fifty mph, and most cars encouraged thisstyle of driving, right up to the 1960’s: they were fairly lowgeared, and had gearboxes which I describe as having threestarter gears and overdrive. Some had only three speeds intheir gearbox, with second being between second and third oncontemporary four speeders!Cars like a 1935 Morris 10, which had an “on-the-road price”of around £150, had a top speed of 60 mph, and there werefew which could exceed this, mostly they were more expensive!The standard NA Magnette was just twice the price of theMorris saloon. Even Rolls Royce cars, though, had top speeds