1923 Scottish Six Days Trial

„A Terrible Test“ - (vide The Autocar) - but not too terrible for the 8 h.p. ROVER

An account of the manner in which the six 8 h.p. ROVER Cars battled to success in the 1923 Scottish Six Days Trial, and thus repeated their performance in the 1921 trial.

The Scottish Six Days Trial.

Lessons of the Scottish Trials.

The outstanding lesson conveyed by the results of the Scottish Six Days Trials, organised by the Edinburgh and District M.C., and concluded on Saturday last, is that an immense increase in efficiency in the smallest and cheapest cars ir to be noted during the past twelve months.
The test embraced over a thousand miles of the most difficult conditions in Scotland, and the officials almost went out of their way to include hills which, to the average tourist, would appear unclimbable. Indeed, it is doubtful if one per cent of the output of the firms whose cars did so well in th trial will ever be asked to scale such precipitous and rough gradients, and certainly not under similar conditions. The weather was appalling throughout nearly the whole of the trial, for snow, hail and blizzards were commonplace. Air-cooling vindicated itself thoroughly as entirely practible under the severest conditions. An indication of the faith makers have in their productions was graphically portrayed by the netry od a coupé, fitted with an air-cooled engine. It performed magnificently, and its occupants were the envy of all during the violent storms.
The Autocar, 18 May 1923.

The Route.

Monday, May 7th.
Route: Perth, Amulree, Kenmore, Killin, Crinnlarich, Tyndrum, Bridge of Orchy, Inveroran, Bridge of Coe, Kinlochieven, Fort William, Spean Bridge, Fort Augustus, Glendoe, Foyers Hotel, Inverfarigaig, Torness, Inverness, Beauly, Strathpeffer.
Test Hills: Amulree, Mamore, Glendore, Inverfarigaig (not observed).
Miles: 206

Tuesday, May 8th.
Route: Strathpeffer, Garve, Achnasheen, Kinlochewe, Gairloch, Aultbea, Dundonnell, Aultnaharie, Braemore Lodge, Garve, Strathpeffer.
Test Hill: Aultnaharie.
Miles: 137

Wednesday, May 9th.
Route: Strathpeffer, Garve, Achnasheen, Achnashellach, Achnasheen, Garve, Strathpeffer, Beauly, Inverness, Nairn, Forres, Elgin
Test Hills: Tornapress, Applecross

Miles: 196

Thursday, May 10th.
Route: Elgin, Ordequish, Dulnaehaugh, Tomintoul, Cockbridge, Braemar, Blairgowrie, Perth, Sheriffmuir, Stirling, Falkirk, Linlithgow, Corstorphine, Edinburgh.
Test Hills: Ordequish, Lecht.
Miles: 194½

Friday, May 11th.
Route: Edinburgh, Penicuik, Macbiehill Broughton, Crook Inn, Talla, Gordon Arms, Tibbie Shiels, Hawick Teviothead, Langholm, Canonbie, Ecclefechan, Lockerbie, Lochmaben, Dumfries.
Test Hills: Talla, Kirk Wynd (Langholm)
Miles: 164

Saturday, May 12th.
Route: Dumfries, Ae Bridge, Closeburn, Thornhill, Crawford, Abington, Roberton, Howgatefoot, Hyndford Bridge, Lanark, Biggar, Dolphinton, West Linton, Fairmilehead, Blackford Hill. Finish.
Test Hill: Blackford (Edinburgh)
Miles: 100
Total distance: 997½ miles

The 8 h.p. ROVERS in the Scottish Trial.

To so great an extent has the modern small car developed that the trials organiser who wishes to be able to differentiate between the best and the next best cars is faced with a formidable task, and is forced to employ methods that would, only a few years ago, have been considered utterly brutal. Scotland is a land of natural hills. Its roadways are in the main poorly surfaced. Reliability and the ability successfully to negotiate really serious obstacles are the main desiderata of the Scottish motorist, and it was with these points well in mind, apparently, that the route for their Scottish Six Days‘ Trial was chosen by the committee of the Edinburgh and District Motor Club.

F. Stych (8 h.p. Rover Four-seater) making light of Applecross. The hillside is covered with snow.
The Autocar

In all, over 1,000 miles were covered. The section traversed each day included at least one „freak“ hill and stretches that required considerable effort to be made to enable the schedule speed of 20 m.p.h. to be maintained. Although we describe the gradients as „freak“, they were really actual hills that residents in certain localities would have to use. Take, for example, Aultnaharie, the test hill of the second day. It is the only route leading to or from a little fishing village on Loch Broom, even though it is as difficult to climb as Beggar’s Roost.
The weather added to the difficulties of the competitors. During the first three days a strong wind made bright sunshine and driving rain alternate regularly every half hour. Naturally, faces and eyes suffered considerably, while the road surfaces were slimy and heavy, makng big demands on the engines.
To the motorist who requires a sound, go-anywhere economy car, the results are very informative. The trial was such that the wear and tear entailed on chassis, springs, engine, and transmissions would represent that normally brought about by 10,000 miles‘ running over ordinary routes. That the small cars did so well is high tribute to their construction.
Starting at Perth, on Monday, the first hill of note was the once-dreaded Amulree. Quickly it became apparent that the present-day air-cooled twin-cylinder light car is a very serviceable performer of gradients. All the six Rovers, one of which, incidentally, is a coupé, the first to make an appearance in a Scottish Six Days‘, climbed the greater part of the hill on second speed, the gear ratios being approximately 6, 12 and 20 to 1.
The Motor, May 15th.

L.N. Bennett (8 h.p. Rover Coupé) taking a water-splash at Ordequish, one of the observed hills on the fourth day.
The Motor

The route led over roughish roads to the Pass of Glendoe. Weather conditions changed. A strong westerly wind drove up sun-obscuring clouds, and with them came stinging, drenching rain. The trip through the Vale of Weeping was truly a terrible journey, especially for the unprotected motor cyclists, and after passing Kinlochleven, what is probably the most severe section of road ever included in a trial was encountered. Imagin the slagheap of a coal mine that has been erupted by a ton of T.N.T., washed by a tropical rain-storm, and hen covered in slime, and some idea of the next nine miles will be formed. The Rovers cyclumphed gaily over the boulders and caniveaux. Perhaps the most amazing of all these extraordinary displays was that of L.N. Bennett’s coupé-bodied Rover. It was a strange sight to see this luxurious little vehicle gallantly battling its way over the wild, storm-driven moorland, with its driver, hatless and coatless, snugly ensconced behind the glass panels.
After lunch, Glendoe was tackled. It has a long,steep pull of 1 in 6 for three-quarters of a mile; comes a dip, and then an S-bend up in a 1 in 4 bank that catches the engines with hot plug points and innards well warmed up - a fit state to display any weak feature. All the Rovers - six are entered - made faultless climbs, but slow, as is to be expected with low bottom-gear ratios.
Light Car and Cyclecar, 11 May 1923.

Thus passed a fairly strenuous forenoon. Towards the luncheon hour we passed the incredible reflections of Loch Carron, wherein giant mountains are faithfully mirrored, snatched a last precautionary dram in the lonely fishing hamlet of Jeantown, and turned aside to clamber over the saddle leading to the bridge ober the thin end of Loch Chisholm in preparation for the fiercest ordeal of the week. How fierce it was to be few guessed; but wary drivers had been anxiously gaugung the altitude of the snow-line all morning, and as soon as the crags of the Pass of the Cattle came into view our worst fears were realised. The snow was at least 500 ft below the summit, and simultaneously the weather finally collapsed, and blizzard after blizzart swept over the tortured procession.

Kirk Wynd ascends from a turning out of the main street of Langholm. This hill was expected to be a Silver Cup eliminator, but most of the cars climbed it magnificently. D. J. Cutler is making an excellent ascent on a 8 h.p. Rover.
The Autocar

A Terrible Test.

Possibly the officials, cowering under boulders at their stations along the five-mile gradient,. were most to be pitied, as their vergil was to last four hours or more. But the drivers, with no comfort but that of an icy gale on the radiators, had to climb the most formidable ascent in Great Britain under terrible conditions, and face a scramble for a frugal lunch round a small cottage on an exposed beach after sliding down five miles of slime. The road was too wet for the snow to lie, but the three hairpins were rapidly reduced to the semblance of a ploughed field, and the ever-invaluable Parsons chains were pobably a vital factor in most of the ascents. But there was a vim and mastery in the climbing quite without parallel on this crucial test, so unique that the individual performance of every car is worth giving in detail.
27, 28, 29. Rovers. All the trio were full of power and as cool as cucumbers after five miles of collarwork. No smoke and no pinking. The coupé was the best handled, with the chummy a close second.
49,50,51. Rovers. The second trio of Rovers had to climb over a demolished road, but completed a glorious sextette of climbs for their marque. Stych made the neatest cornering.
There followed easy roads, blue noses and iced fingers until Tomintoul, where the roads became atrocious.
Within five miles of Tomintoul the cars re-entered the region of perpetual snow, and the ranges were white for miles araound as the procession threaded the sunless valley leading up to the Lecht Hill - once reported the fiercest gradient of the trial routes. It takes a triple combination to stop a modern car-freak gradient, acute corners, and vile surface. The two latter factors were missing here, and the entire entry toured up at speed, few of them dropping into bottom gear till the 1 in 4 section arrived.

Snow Blizzards on Cairnwell.

A marked improvement in climbing calibre was once more manifest. Even in 1922 anxiety was perceptible on this ascent; this year the cars treated it quite contemptuously. The tiny air-cooled Rovers, for example, all stormed up it at a rare pace. Bumpy roads and several fine brake tests brought the party into Braemar for lunch. Here the sky clouded over, and hoods had to be erected in the al fresco garage.
As a consequence of the unparalleled severity of this sustained bad weather, few gold medals can be won, and no gold medals in motoring history can have been more manfully earned. Near Bridge of Cally (which, incidentally, had succumbed to the weather and imposed a detour upon us) the Rover coupé paid its toll for the superior comfort which its crew had enjoyed so much. The petrol tank being exhausted, recourse was had to the spare can, which proved to contain some unknown but completely incombustible liquid. By the time the mechanic had tramped two miles to fetch genuine Shell many marks had melted away.
A hundred miles of assorted Lowland and Border roads brought us to Langholm by 3 p.m. Here cars were checked in the main street and promptly despatched east at right angles up an entry ominously named Kirk Wynd. The bank towered abruptly in 100 yards or so. To the left a graded path, blocked by timber. To the right, another footway similarly barred. Up the centre a quadruply hairpinned zigzag of 150 yards or so, all steep and culminating in a brief, wicked knob just a shade better than 1 in 2, with horizontal reefs of rock jutting odiously out of its face. The natives have trodden a graded switch route round this knob; but the brutal organisers carefully fenced off the switch with boulders, thereby accentuating the acuteness of the final hairpin most alarmingly. Some 500 Langholmers had gathered to see fair play, and it was here that the silver cup list was to be reduced to economicasl proportions.
The first three Rovers appeared presently, and toured up gruffly and poerfully, swinging their starting handles as if in defiance, to the accompaniment of hoarse, manly exhausts that bespoke power in reserve; even the coupé mocked at the 1 in 2 hump.
Then came the second batch of Rovers. Their sang-froid was well illustrated by Chadwick’s passenger, who never even glanced at tghe hill, but pored placidly over his map as the driver jumped the car up.

The Final Test

included the ascent of Blackford Hill, a steep, hard road in the ground of the Observatory with plenty of 1 in 4 in it, and one knuckle a shade worse.
The first trio of Rovers treated the hill very disdainfully considering the size of their engines. Cutler changed up on the landings, and the smart little coupé was quite absurdly fast.

The 8 h.p. Rover Coupé climbed every hill in the most difficult trial ever held without a falter. (On Blackford Hill)
The Motor World

The second trio of Rovers were as impressive as they have been all the week. No carbon, no pinking, no smell, no smoke; and they changed up to second as soon as they cleared the 1 in 4 piece. Evidently their engines can do continuous hard work without being flooded with oil. Everybody who has watched the six Rovers in these trials must have conceived a new admiraton for these wonderful little engines.
It is often said that the 1921 Scottish Trials „made“ the 8-h.p. Rover. The 1923 Trials should canonise them. The six cars, including the impudent coupé, climbed with ease all the test hills, and even rolled up to the famous hairpins four miles above Tomapress on second gear, and that with a gale reging down the pass. On the return journey up Applecross, with the same gale at their tails, the engines kept equally cool. They never looked like showing resprect for a hill, and nothing but petty ill-luck robbed them of the six silver cups which as a team they most richly deserved.
The Autocar, 18 May 1923.

Some Recent 8 h.p. Rover Successes

London - Holyhead Trial - (April 27-28) - 3 Gold Medals

Scottish Six Days Trial - (May 7-12) - 3 Silver Cups, 3 Silver Medals - Every Car Climbed Every Hill

London - Edinburgh Run - (May 18-19) - 6 Gold Medals, 3 Silver Medals

Alan Trophy Trial - (Cumberland County M.C.C., May 26)
Mr. I. H. Dickson won The Alan Trophy (for the best performance of The day)
Mr. F. Stych won The Carr Cup (for the best performance in the light car class)