Dust to dust

For a brief period, Brooklands hosted important trials to find ways for cars to reduce the amount of

dust produced by their tyres.

Words: Tim Morris Photos: Brooklands Museum Collection

Dust was a major problem for the new-fangled motor car in the early 1900s. As well as the vehicle’s occupants, it affected non-motoring members of the public who complained about the amount of dust that coated clean washing and passers-by alike. Most roads outside of towns and cities were unmade and not intended for motor cars, and the car was seen by the general public as no more than ‘an ingenious device for public slaughter’. In 1903, Punch magazine asked in a short poem: ‘Who flies before the oily gust

Wafted his way through whirling dust,

And hopes the beastly thing will bust? Answer: The pedestrian.’

So it was that the RAC held Dust Trials, one of which took place on the new Motor Course at Brooklands on 2 July, 1907 and another the following year on the 20 July. The 1907 Dust Trials were only the fourth event to be held at the newly opened Motor Course, a place that could provide the required dusty surface in controlled conditions. It would prove an early introduction to Brooklands being used by motor manufacturers to test their vehicles and products.

The aim of the trials was to produce a motor car that produced practically no dust as it passed by in order to remove this particular aspect of the public’s opposition to motoring. In order to conduct the test, a 200 x 10-foot wide dust track surfaced with fine limestone dust and loose leaves

was constructed at the top of the Finishing Straight. Cars would travel along at least 100-feet of this track at a steady speed

The tapering undershield and ducts can be clearly seen behind the front wheels of this entrant in the Dust Trials run at Brooklands.

of 20mph and then 30mph, the speed regulated by string with pieces of ribbon tied to it at intervals and run on an endless loop. Cars would travel adjacent to a piece of ribbon and not pass it thus keeping the speed constant and any car seen travelling lower than the moving cord would be disqualified. As befitting Brooklands, the RAC made the trials into a competition with three classes relating largely to the tyres used. Class 1 was for standard cars fitted

with ordinary pneumatic tyres; Class 2 for those entered privately but with tyres regularly used on the road; Class 3 was for experimental vehicles fitted with a device or alteration to reduce the amount of dust. A description of the device had to be provided prior to the trial and the results of any tests already made included in the entry.

Forty-six cars took part in the trials and the most interesting were undoubtedly those in Class 3 that had been specially modified. They included such strange things as solid rubber tyres working on hollow rubber rings and pneumatic disc wheels that had an interior filled with compressed air as well as an assortment of dust guards, undershields and fenders.

The 1907 Dust Trials were won by Frederick Coleman in a White Steamer, with Edmund Gascoigne runner-up in a Wilson-Pilcher petrol car. Dermot Mooney won Class 2 in a Stanley Steamer. In the experimental Class 3, special awards of merit were given to a Vivinus fitted with an undershield and a Dennis with disc wheels and undershield tapering upwards to the end of the frame.

Frederick Abernethy Coleman was an American who joined White Steam Cars in 1903 and became a member of the Society of Motor Manufacturers in 1906 but resigned three years later. He lived in Hampstead with his wife Lois, also a US citizen.

Edmund Gascoigne was born in Maidstone and joined the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company in 1896. He was a motor engineer and employer who lived with his fashion designer wife Susannah and their two daughters in Paddington. Ten years later he worked for Armstrong Whitworth. Interestingly, the car he was driving was built by Wilson-Pilcher which started making automobiles in London in 1901. Walter Wilson set up the company after his business partner Percy Pilcher died in a gliding accident in 1899. At the time, they were on the verge of manned powered flight and had an aircraft and engine almost ready to fly some nine years before AV Roe was experimenting with powered flight at Brooklands. The automobile company was taken over by Armstrong Whitworth in 1904 and production moved to Newcastle, which may be why he was driving such a car in the trials.

Another unusual model of car was the Vivinus, which was awarded a special merit

Solid disc wheels were used by some competitors in the Dust Trials to reduce the amount of dirt blown around by spoked wheels.

having been fitted with an undershield and boots behind each wheel. They were originally made by Ateliers Vivinus SA in Brussels from 1899. Alexis Vivinus, as many other manufacturers did, originally made and sold bicycles but from 1895 began to make his own cars, eventually leading to the larger shaft-driven four-cylinder models seen at Brooklands in 1908. Despite the award at Brooklands, four years later the company went into liquidation and Vivinus himself moved to Minerva.

The Dust Trials were held the following year at Brooklands on 20 July, 1908, but a certain type of vehicle was banned from taking part in that year’s event as they ‘showed such good results for dustlessness’ the previous year. Surprisingly, these were the steam cars, but they were still allowed to compete hors concours and be included with the other petrol-powered cars as ‘they had already proved their capacity not to produce dust and so should still be in the public eye’. The Engineer magazine bemoaned the fact that one car was not used to run the course with different makes of tyre saying that ‘it would be interesting to see the different merits of round and square treads and the exact relation of the size of tyres to the amount of dust raised.’ The 1908 trial was the last time such an event would be run at Brooklands.