by and large , the Citroen was a remarkably good car . like most French machines , it always did what you expected it to do , and you never felt insecure driving it , no matter what the circumstances might be . both the steering and the change mechanism were rather heavy , but one got used to this . there were times , too , when I longed for a fourth gear , particularly in hilly Devonshire country , I remember , when I was often caught between ratios and felt quite helpless . characteristic of its country of origin , you always knew that there were only four cylinders working for you under the bonnet , and I should have liked to try the Big 6 , which must be a very pleasant handful of a motor car . the cornering and the road-holding on the Citroen were astonishingly good , as anyone knows who has driven one , and the manner in which it remained glued to the ground going round corners , no matter what the road surface might be , was most endearing . but best of all was the Citroen &apos;s gluttony for work . it seemed to relish being driven hard , and flat-out driving all day appeared to leave it refreshed and longing for more . sometimes that pleasant Citroen used to be subject to a minor vibration period when cornering fast on lock . this was only a slight nuisance , and was caused by the carden shaft overrunning the engine at certain times and not at others , creating a non-constant velocity . I mention this only because the same thing , in a much more extreme form , cropped up at Lagondas when we were testing the prototype 2 1/2-litre Lagonda at Staines immediately after world war 2 . for a long time we could not understand why , when travelling slowly in top with practically no throttle , the engine appeared to miss . this was all the more curious because when carrying only one passenger under identical circumstances we had no trouble with the engine at all . I do n&apos;t know how long we all wasted on this annoying snag before the answer suddenly occurred to us . of course , we at last reasoned , with the extra weight at the rear , the angle was altered between the bevel-box and the wheels and we might be subjecting the carden shaft to a non-constant velocity . at last our reasoning was right , the vibration occasioned giving an almost identical impression to that caused by a missing engine . at that time I believe there was only one foreign firm making constant velocity joints , and as it was quite impossible to get supplies , we faked-up this vibration period , quite successfully , too . I do n&apos;t know whether Alec Issigonis and his team met this same trouble with the prototype Mini-Minor , but I was interested to see , when the specification of this car was published , that the design included a constant velocity joint . it would be interesting to know if any other design teams have met the same trouble , and have been as mystified as we were with the Lagonda . I think now that I ought really to have driven more cheap bread-and-butter cars during my active years as a designer , and indeed it was not even my choice that I drove one model almost daily for several years . it came about in this way . after I had been bought by Rolls-Royce and told to hand over to Jack Barclay my own 8-litre car , I found myself in the unusual position of being without personal transport . this was the first time since about 1910 , when cars were still comparatively rare anyway , that I had not had one . it was a curious feeling . I had to use buses and tubes , and I did n&apos;t like this much , so I took to walking instead , which was probably better for me , but rather slow . at that time I could barely have afforded the down payment on the cheapest on the market , and though I hope I did n&apos;t tell anyone my dilemma , Billy Rootes must have divined the reason behind my curious and uncharacteristic new habit of tramping from point to point about London . Billy Rootes ( now Lord Rootes , of course ) had been an active and successful agent for Bentleys , and I knew him quite well by then ; well enough , anyway , for him to be able to ask me , without so much as a blush , whether I would n&apos;t mind doing him a favour . I &apos;d be very grateful if you &apos;d try this car , he told me on the telephone one day . I want your honest opinion on it . the car in question was one of the new Hillman Minxes , and for that particular week-end , and for almost every weekend for months afterwards , a Minx or one of their larger cars used to be made available to me . this was not only a great convenience , but I could quite honestly tell him that I thought the Minx was a very nice little car . I have never forgotten this kindly and thoughtful gesture of Rootes at a time when things were not going so well for me . he has not only deserved all the success he has had , but has reached his present distinguished position by honesty and integrity as well as kindness . I should doubt if he has any enemies . some months later I was able to purchase a Minx for myself , on the specially favourable terms Rootes offered me , and from then until the beginning of the war I was never without one , although they were really my wife &apos;s cars . I must say , though , that I was rather doubtful about going to the south of France in a Hillman Minx after always doing the journey previously in somewhat swifter and more robust machines . however , I was lucky to have a car at all , and set out with my wife , a considerable weight of luggage and some nervousness . but I was soon surprised at how game and robust the Minx was , and how effortlessly one could drive 350 miles in a day in it . it was hardly a grand tourer , but the only trouble we had was with tyres , suffering five punctures by the time we reached Le Mans , where I purchased some more suitable ones . a Standard 8 scarcely seemed a suitable machine for the long trek to the sun , either ; but , like the Minx , it surprised me by its willingness and ability to slog along all day at a reasonable average . I had one of these for a short time after the war , and did many thousands of miles in it . the road-holding was hardly brilliant , and of course it was never intended to suffer the liberties I took with it on one hurried return from the south of France , but it was quite a good little car . the only car I drive regularly now is the nice little Morris Minor , of which more later . 2 . motor bicycles and Brooklands . the four-wheeled vehicle with its internal combustion engine that we call the motor car has given me much pleasure , as well as pain and disappointment . but I am not sure now whether I do not resent the manner in which it has intruded , filling far too much of my life and leaving me with insufficient time to explore so many other fields in which I am interested , like meteorology and wireless telegraphy . perhaps I regret now a little that I made the motor industry my profession , if only because for so long the machines filled my life to the exclusion of almost everything else . I sometimes wonder if I should not have stuck to those fine , powerful and friendly things - locomotives . the locomotive started it all for me , and if the railways had provided me with a living to the standards I considered necessary , I should probably have stuck with them . but it was a sad parting , and I always missed them through the years of aero-engine and car designing . it was , in fact , while I was working on locomotives at Doncaster that I became a motor-bicycling enthusiast ; and I certainly got more pure fun out of the motor bicycle than I ever got from any of my cars , although I willingly accept that sport on two wheels is essentially for the young , and for me it was only a sport , with no commercial purpose behind it . I look back now with great affection on those days of motor-bicycle competition in Edwardian times , before I was afflicted by the car bug . all the events run by the auto cycle union and motor cycling club possessed an excellent spirit of friendly , co-operative , uncommercialized competitiveness . I do not remember a single hill-climb , sprint , trial or Brooklands race in which this spirit was not present . it was not unusual to see competitors helping one another by the roadside , or making last-moment adjustments to one another&apos;s machines just before a race . I discovered very sharply just how tough competition work was when , without any previous experience , I entered my 3-h.p Quadrant for the London-Edinburgh trial . this Quadrant , with its surface carburettor , was rather like an unreliable and uncomfortable present-day motorized bicycle to drive . any healthy young man today would gladly take his motorized bicycle from London to Edinburgh ; that would be no great achievement , if quite hard work pedalling up some of the steeper hills . but we had to do this journey to a tight schedule on roads that in places seemed not to have been touched since they broke up after the Roman occupation . it took a day and night to accomplish , and the only food was at the control points ; but I was always too late at these to have time to eat and did the trip on apples and chocolate as I went along . to my astonishment , I got a gold medal , too ! I did a lot of these endurance trials after this , enjoying both the spirit behind them and the sense of independent competitiveness out on the open road that they inspired . I did them mostly on Rexs and Indians ; London to Exeter , London to Land &apos;s End and back several times , London to Plymouth and back ; and each was a really testing challenge to your endurance and your aptitude , for , of course , breakdowns were frequent . some of the hill-climbs , too , were really devastating , and the competition very close , with a fifth of a second often separating the three or four fastest times . events I remember particularly were those run at Kop Hill near Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire and at Sharpenhoe near Luton , and of course those great runs up Snaefell in the Isle of Man after the tourist trophy races . as these became more popular their importance became recognized by the factories , and works teams began to appear . naturally these works teams soon dominated the hill-climbs , and I had great sport as an independent trying to beat them . with experience I began to get the hang of tuning my 5-h.p Indian , lightening the pistons and putting up the compression and generally fiddling , until I began to put up faster times than the works riders , which gave me more pleasure than anything . in fairness I should add that I got every sort of help from the factory , who were quite happy so long as an Indian won ! motor-bicycle racing at Brooklands was a tame business after the T.T and hill-climbs . Brooklands races were usually short sprints or one-hour events , with the results depending less on the riders than the machines . there was not much finesse involved in racing on Brooklands , except perhaps in avoiding the worst bits of surface . I have never believed that Edge &apos;s run on the Napier soon after it was opened was responsible for the poor surface from which Brooklands suffered . this was always worse towards the top of the bankings , and I do n&apos;t think that the builders ever succeeded in satisfactorily blending this top section . even in the earliest days they always seemed to be mending parts of the tracks , and this was not always as well done as it could have been , with the consequence that it never got over this roughness . 