Wednesday 3rd September 2014

1918 Maxwell endurance run: Time For Tea?

Attempt a bit of green laning at the weekend? You could probably try quite a lot more...

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It's amazing what cars like the new Discovery Sport will do when you take them off the road. How do they do it? Well, it's a simple combination of brilliantly engineered four-wheel drive transmission systems, highly advanced electronics, enough computing power to launch a space programme and four or five years of intensive development.

The 1918 Maxwell didn't have any of that, but in Los Angeles-based Maxwell dealer Harold L Arnold's remarkable film - surely one of the earliest off-road advertising vids ever - we see this game motor picking its way across some truly horrid-looking terrain with all the surefooted insouciance of a Pyrenean mountain goat.

The movie starts with footage of the Maxwell dealership being built on the corner of 7th and Figueroa in LA, now the site of an HSBC bank (boo!), before switching to a garage where we see our boys loading up their Maxwell with enough camping gear and grub for a week. Then they're off to SoCal's Thousand Palms desert via a giant mudhole that would stop quite a few moderns. They stop at the old gold town of Randsburg, which is pure Wild West, before launching the poor old Maxwell at every bush and boulder in sight.

It takes a hell of a beating, but there's no stopping the dogged little chap. Well, not that we can see anyway. Advertising was quite creative in those days. We aren't given any insights as to the physical wellbeing of the two hardy souls who bounced from one knife-edged rut to another for a week, or possibly a day, but if you traced their route you might still be able to find some of their mercury fillings.

Who cares about advertising integrity anyway? Nobody's pretending that the 1918 Maxwell would be much fun on a fast Continental blast, or stuck in a London snarl up. The lesson here, surely, is the remarkable ability of the simple motor car to conquer an unlikely amount of Nature, and a reminder of the virtues of light weight and construction techniques that owe more to the smithy than the studio.

See the video here.

 

[Jasper Gilder]

Like the affirdavit about no mechanical failures, but there seemed to be a lot of rope holding the front mudguards in place

Stunning performance for the time - wonder if any of them developed back trouble in later life??!!

[dandare]

Really good, if they didn't cheat.
This came up on the playlist after it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embed...
Also very impressive.