Next to its ability to do the exceptional things when required, the most useful accomplishment of the automobile is its wonderful capacity for standing up to its work day in and day out in fair weather or foul, regardless of the condition of the roads.  This is shown every year in the spectacular Glidden tours, otherwise the National Reliability tests, in which a number of cars of various makes cover a scheduled route of two or three thousand miles, in which are included all the different kinds of abominations facetiously termed “roads.”  Other tests without number are constantly being evolved to demonstrate the already established fact that an automobile can do anything required of it.

There was the New York to Paris race, for instance.  Starting from New York on February 12, 1908, when traveling was at its worst, and arriving in Paris July 30, the winner floundered in snow, mud, sand, and rocks, over mountain ranges and through swamps, in eighty-eight days’ running time for the 12,116 miles of land travel.  That was a demonstration of what an automobile can do that has never been surpassed.  Yet the Thomas car that did it was restored to its original condition at a cost of only $90 after the trip was ended.

Another remarkable demonstration of endurance was that given by a Chalmers-Detroit touring car, which was driven 208 miles every day for a hundred consecutive days over average roads.  When the 20,800 miles were finished, just to show that it still felt its oats, the car which had already covered 6,000 miles of roads through Western States before the test began, ran over to Pontiac, Michigan, and hauled the Mayor 26 miles to Detroit.  Then it was run into the shops and taken down for examination.  Being found to be in perfect condition except for the valves, which required some trifling adjustment to take up the wear on the valve stems, and for the piston rings, which needed setting out, it was reassembled and started on another test.

But, after all, the most wonderful thing about an automobile is its almost infinite capacity to endure cruel and inhuman treatment.  No matter whether the brutality is inflicted through ignorance or awkwardness, or, rarest of all, through unavoidable accident, the effect on steel and wood and rubber is the same.  Yet the auto stands it.

In brake tests it has been demonstrated that a car traveling at the rate of eighteen miles an hour can be stopped in a distance of twenty-five feet.  The knowledge that this can be done in an emergency is a great comfort, but it should be equally well known that it does not improve the car to make all stops that way.  Yet how often are drivers seen tearing up to the curb at twenty miles an hour or more to slam on the brakes at the last instant with a violence that nearly causes the car to turn a somersault, bringing it to a standstill in twenty feet, when there was no earthly reason why they should not have used four times that distance.  Or if occasion arises for slowing down in a crowded street, the same kind of driver throws out his clutch and applies the brakes with the throttle wide open so the motor can race unhindered.