To travel for nearly 15 months in a solid-tyred Trojan car from Singapore to London, and thus, to cover 12,000 miles through 14 different countries, has been the wonderful kaleidoscopic record of three intrepid travellers, who reached the winning post of their journey, Westminster Bridge, on November 30th. They were afterwards the guests at a luncheon in London given in their honour at the Holborn Restaurant by the directors of Leyland Motors, Ltd., the makers of the Trojan car
The adventurers endured the extremes of cold in Baluchistan and of heat in Mesopotamia: often they were starving and at other times craving for life-giving water amid the sweltering heat of the desert sands. Constantly within sight of the end of their modest exchequer, they were never beaten.
"..and we attribute our success," said Mr Canagasabey, the originator of the venture, "to our determination to get through at all costs: and neither wild beasts, wilder peoples, nor howling tempests could stop us so long as our brave little Trojan held together. And so here we are at Westminster Bridge, with all the outward appearances of a shipwrecked crew but with no semblance of a wreck."
The experiences, related with characteristic modesty by the adventurers themselves are made the more astonishing by the fact that theirs was no scientifically prepared expedition; there were no pre-arranged food and fuel bases; their equipment was of the scantiest, including neither firearms nor spare parts. In fact, their kit would have discouraged a party of holiday-makers from touring Wales; their total finances amounted to 55 Singapore dollars, equivalent in English money to about £6
The Trojan Utility Car was designed by Leslie Hounsfield and manufactured from 1922-1936.
The car was available in just one body style, a two door tourer, and a choice of three colours. The non-removable wheels were steel pressings with solid tyres. It cost £230 when announced in 1922 (£5 more than the Austin Seven), but by 1924 the Utility Car cost £157 (£8 less than the Austin).
Advertising slogans at the time included "The Car for the Man who can't afford a Car!" and "Can You Afford to Walk!". The latter included a comparison of the price of shoe leather and socks against the running costs
Powered by a l 1/2 litre horizontal two-stroke twin-cylinder engine, while transmission was by two-speed epicyclic gearbox and double chains to a solid rear axle. A punt-type chassis was used, and long cantilever springs were fitted.
From Singapore the route taken was through Malaya and Southern Siam to Penang; thence by boat to Calcutta, through India via Delhi and the Sind desert to Karachi. Jacobabad and Quetta; through Baluchistan to Duzdab on the Persian frontier; then though northern Persia across the northern boundary of the Persian desert, via Meshed and Teheran, down to Baghdad, and then along the Euphrates to Aleppo. Through Anatolia, reaching Constantinople by ferry across the historic Bosphorous, via Adrianople to Bulgaria, through Jugo-Slavia, Italy and France. The catalogue of the adventurers' weather experience was completed by crossing to Dover in the recent fog.
Of the 12,000 miles of land travelling, 8,000 were over country which had either no semblance of a road or the merest indications of donkey and camel tracks. Sometimes, the adventurers say, they travelled all day, but often the heat by day was so great that they could travel only during the night, relying entirely on the compass.
Only one part of the car had to be replaced - the front axle; this was due to the kindly attentions of a falling boulder weighing about half a ton: the substitution was affected at a Baluchistan railway depot by means of a boiler tube! This boiler tube has held up ever since and was still doing duty as a front axle when the car crossed Westminster Bridge.
The mishap to the axle took place in the Sheik Wasil Gorge, when the down-bill slope of a boulder-strewn mountain was being negotiated. The merest touch of the car wheels was sufficient to send a boulder hurtling down the 1 -in-4 gradient over a mile long. In its head-long flight the boulder cannoned into others, and before the Trojan was half-way down the gorge it had become the centre of an avalanche of rock.
Sand, unsympathetic travelling material though it be, especially when it gets over the runningboard, yields pride of place to the plastic mud of Baluchistan. At Padak, in Baluchistan, where the rainy season was in full force, the adventurers took 24 hours to travel 8 miles.
Mud mixed with putty and treacle, and watered down with liquid pitch would be but a poor substitute for the 10 miles of clammy, plastic substance they encountered. Every few yards it was necessary to remove by hand the "mud" which had filled the entire space between the wheels and the wings. Although the car sank up to its axles in a great many places, it maintained slow forward progress.
When asked when they came nearest to abandoning the trip, the adventurers showed a photograph of the Trojan hanging over a precipice. Luckily, however, it was eventually rescued with scarcely a scratch on its body.
On one occasion a 1,200-mile stretch had to be negotiated without any possibility of obtaining further supplies of fuel, and the little car was loaded, in addition to its three passengers, water supplies and kit, with 68 gallons of petrol.
In spite of this precaution, however, there was almost a fuel shortage, owing to a detour of some 100 miles having to be made by order of a Turkish patrol. The patrol, on the look-out for three Kurd murderers believed to have escaped in a motorcar, insisted on the Trojan and crew journeying to headquarters, with the pleasant intention of carrying out the much delayed execution but, happily for the harassed travellers, their alibi was established.
The three adventurers, now resting in London, intend to see the sights before returning - this time by a more conventional route - to their homes in Singapore.
