The Forty-Niners

(See Cover)

For two nights this week, trains of snorting vans lumbered up to Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and disgorged rich cargoes from Detroit. Inside the hotel, swarms of workmen sweated under floodlights to turn the Grand Ballroom into the fanciest automobile showroom on earth. On a wide stage, they set up an endless chain conveyor and a revolving platform for the new models; across the room, they reared a 25-ft. pylon above a cluster of jewel-bright auto engines.

For its first big postwar coming-out party, the debut of the 1949 Chevrolet and Pontiac, General Motors Corp. had spent a million dollars. The world's biggest automaker had bundled threescore U.S. automotive editors (and plenty of potables) aboard its Astra Domed, diesel-drawn "Train of Tomorrow," for a free ride from Detroit to New York. It would pick up the tab for a three-day whirl of luncheons, receptions and banquets for 5,000 people. All over the U.S., G.M. dealers were also cutting capers; Omaha Chevrolet dealers sent a flagpole sitter aloft for nine days (at $100 a day) to whomp up interest in the unveiling of new models.

Beast of Burden. This chromium-plated razzle-dazzle was not only G.M.'s recognition of the approaching buyers' market for all cars; it was also a salute to the role which the automobile plays in U.S. life. To the average American, a car is much more than a chromium-jawed beast of burden. It is the next thing to being a member of the family, regarded as affectionately as the Bedouin regards his camel, or the Mongolian tribesman his shaggy pony. It is both a necessity and luxury, a help in making a livelihood and a means of escape. When he buys a new car, the average American approaches the job with considerable gravity and excitement, and often only after a rousing argument at the dinner table.*

Four for Four. This week, with every gilded chassis and every cutaway transmission in place, G.M.'s President Charles Erwin Wilson and his four executive vice presidents would stand atop a marble staircase at the Waldorf to greet their guests and show their wares, on which they had spent a round $150 million for retooling. All of G.M.'s cars showed a drastic change either inside or out. They were so low and rakish that a small man could look over the top. They had wider seats (average front seat width: 62 inches), little change in wheelbases (but in some models shorter overall length), and were up an average of 3.5% in price.

The biggest eye-poppers were four $30,000 Cadillacs, the costliest production cars ever built in the U.S. (and described by hard-breathing pressagents as "sleek and sybaritic specimens of automotive splendor").

One was a black town car built for Mrs. Alfred P. Sloan Jr., wife of G.M.'s board chairman. It has interior fittings of silver, a chauffeur's umbrella, a pearl-grey clipped sheepskin carpet, a short-wave telephone, a gold compact, and a lifetime fountain pen. Nearby was a gunmetal "hardtop" convertible designed for President Wilson and christened the Coup de Ville. Upholstered in pleated gunmetal leather, it has a telephone, pull-out desk and engraved vanity case. ("Not that I use powder," quipped Wilson.)

The third was "El Rancho," a convertible painted "in the singing thunder of a Mexican Dawn" (brown), and soon to be driven by Cadillac Boss John F. Gordon on his Arizona ranch. It has kip-side suede trim, antiqued silver hardware, steer-head escutcheons on the doorsills, and saddle-stitched pistol holsters on the doors. The fourth "sybaritic specimen" was a sedan in "Caribbean Day Break" (green), which would go to some other G.M. executive.

Two for the Show. The crowds at the Waldorf would eye the Cadillacs, perhaps with envy, but what they really went to see were the cars they could buy. Here there were some touches of splendor, too.

CHEVROLET had been radically changed in a big bid to stay out front in the lowest-price field. Lower and bigger, the Chevvy has larger windows, curving windshield, and new front-axle springing to make riding and steering easier. Also, for better riding, the rear seat has been moved ahead of the axle; for better visibility, the defroster keeps the entire windshield clear. Seats are wider, 60 inches in front and 58 3/8 inches in the rear. Both the Fleetline (with the torpedo back) and the Styleline (with the square "bustle back") have Chevvy's 90 h.p. valve-in-head engine. The inevitable question: Is Chevrolet as handsome as the Ford? Some shoppers would think that Ford's front end is more clean-cut. Whether or not Chevrolet's rounded overall design is more graceful than the boxier Ford is a point that will be argued for months.

PONTIAC has lowered its hood and roof, widened the seats and gained a suave look reminiscent of that car of distinction, Ford's old Lincoln Continental. A styling touch: the instrument-panel clock is in the center of a concentric-ringed radio speaker. Pontiac has dropped its Torpedo line in favor of the Chieftain. Both it and the Streamliner come as 90-h.p. sixes or 103-h.p. eights. Optional Hydra-Matic transmission ($185 extra) has proved so popular it will be built into 75% of all Pontiacs.

BUICK is banking heavily on its "revolutionary" Dynaflow automatic transmission, which has eliminated the manual shift for normal driving. This year Dynaflow is standard on Buick's big 155-h.p. Roadmaster, extra ($200) on the 120-h.p. Super. Buick's circular "venti-ports" on its front fenders, partly a styling fillip and partly for engine cooling, have already earned the Super the nickname the "three-holer" and the Roadmaster the "four-holer."

OLDSMOBILE'S big talking point is under the hood of the "Futuramic 98" Series: the V-8 "Rocket" engine, with a 7.25-to-1 compression ratio.* This gives it 135 h.p. while using less gas than the old 115-h.p. motor. It can be stepped up to a 12-to-1 ratio--with increased horsepower and lower gas consumption--whenever the higher octane fuel it requires is available at gas stations.

CADILLAC has ventured even farther along the high-compression road. Its 160-h.p. V-8 engine, most powerful in any G.M. car, has a 7.5-to-1 ratio, yet is 5 inches shorter and 215 pounds lighter than last year's. The mileage, 14 to a gallon, is 15% better. Last year, by introducing rear fenders with raised fins, Cadillac raised customers' brows. Now it has the satisfaction of seeing the style widely copied in G.M. cars.

One for Three. Basically, the new models not only look alike; as far as the midsection of the body is concerned, many are identical. The small Oldsmobile (the Futuramic 76), Pontiac and Chevrolet have the same body from windshield to rear window; Cadillac, the big Oldsmobile and Buick also share a body style.

In the same way that design now overlaps, so do prices. List f.o.b. prices on the 1949 Chevrolet range from $1,360 to $1,878; on the Pontiac from $1,721 to $2,722; the Oldsmobile from $1,764 to $3,338; the Buick from $1,787 to $3,797; the Cadillac from $2,840 to $5,253. Thus G.M.'s five divisions are competing among themselves.

Chrysler Bows. Last week their outside competitors were busy too. Studebaker was out with new, more powerful but basically unchanged Champions and Commanders. Hudson was pushing its "step-down" idea of a body cradled in the frame. Nash was plugging its "Airflyte" design with all four wheels hidden by the fender sheathing.

At week's end Chrysler Corp., although it will have no public showings for seven weeks, held a press preview in Detroit of its 1949 Chrysler, DeSoto, Dodge and Plymouth. (On the eve of the preview, Ford slyly held a party of its own. It had no new models to show; it just thought it a good time to entertain the press, and perhaps take the edge off Chrysler's party.)

In all four of its cars, Chrysler had increased headroom, seat width and wheel-bases, while lowering the roofs, cutting overall width and bumper-to-bumper length. Compared with most postwar cars, body lines were conservative. There were two brand-new models: Plymouth's Suburban, a metal station wagon that sleeps two, and a Dodge roadster with manual top and old-fashioned detachable plastic side curtains. With no frills or extras, it would be the cheapest Dodge. Chrysler had simplified its automatic fluid drive transmission, dubbed it Gyromatic, and made it regular equipment on DeSoto and Chrysler, optional on Dodge.

G.M.'s division heads eyed their competitors, but they weren't having any trouble selling their own cars--yet. Cadillac, for example, boasted a backlog of 113,000 orders and up to 17 months' wait for delivery; Chevrolet, 1,500,000, and up to a long two years--all depending on the dealer's allotment and backlog.

But the fat backlogs and long waits had disappeared in a hurry for many competitors (Kaiser, Frazer, Hudson, Lincoln). And with G.M. hoping in 1949 to make 10% more than the 2,048,019 cars & trucks it made in 1948, the buyer's market for G.M. was not far away either.

Man at the Wheel. No one knew this better than G.M.'s five division bosses and the man who keeps them pulling together with the purring power of a V-8--President Charles Erwin Wilson. A $236,000-a-year captain of industry, "C.E.," as his friends call him, is a reserved, blue-eyed boss who thinks fast, talks slow and never wastes his time pounding the desk. Slightly jowly, with a pleasant smile, he has neither bombast nor bulk (he is 5 ft. 10 in., 175 lbs.). He talks with a mild Midwest twang, walks with a slight stoop as if bucking a breeze. Both his tie and his crop of snow-white hair are usually a little askew, but his mind is as precise as an engineer's slipstick.

He does not boss his army of 380,000 employees entirely from a desk. Last year, to get more steel, he grabbed his hat, packed a bag and hotfooted it to Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Manhattan to haggle with steelmen. By a shrewd deal, he got promises of extra steel in 1949, and in return, promised to move some Fisher Body operations to Pittsburgh to give steelmen a local market that will remain when demand falls off.

The Right Card. A shrewd poker and bridge player, Wilson plays his best when the stakes are high. He can sit down with as canny a bargainer as U.A.W.'s President Walter Reuther, and come out with his shirt on. Once he accepted Reuther's challenge to a public debate; the jury of newsmen, who had expected persuasive Walter Reuther to triumph easily, thought Wilson held him to a draw. "I get along with Mr. Reuther as well as anyone on my side of the table," Wilson said recently, "and considerably better than some on his side."

It was Wilson who thought up G.M.'s plan to gear hourly rates to the cost-of-living index, as in the present U.A.W. contract. Labor liked the idea (it got a 14-c--an-hour raise). It was also good business: in March, wages will probably go down 1-c- an hour to match the cost-of-living drop. The motive behind Wilson's proposal was typical of his economic philosophy that wage hikes or cuts should follow cost-of-living changes, not cause them.

Do Not Disturb. In his austere, 14th-floor corner office in Detroit's General Motors Building (it overlooks U.A.W.'s headquarters across the street), C.E. works between a rolltop desk and a flat desk, two telephones at his elbow and five briefcases at his feet. As he chain-smokes Chesterfields, he often makes and takes his own phone calls. Many a junior executive in an outlying plant of G.M.'s empire has picked up a phone to hear: "This is C.E. ... I want. . ."

To get around the curse of bigness, C.E. allows his divisions* wide autonomy. The overall policymaking is done by G.M.'s 16 committees and subcommittees. As chairman of the potent operations policy committee and member of several others, Wilson has a strong voice in making the decisions, and is often the man who takes over after the meeting and gets them carried out. Even though he largely leaves corporate finance to the New York office and Board Chairman Sloan, Wilson's workload of running everything else is immense.

When he wants to be alone, he strides down the hall with an armload of papers, takes over a private dining room, and the word goes out: do not disturb. Executives dread the 5 p.m. "stand by" orders that chain them, fidgeting, to their desks while C.E., oblivious to time, gets ready to summon them. After they do leave, Wilson spends many a lonely night in the corporation's living suites in the building, curled up before a fireplace with homework that is too pressing to take home. To save time, he makes the 20-mile trip home only two or three nights a week.

Unlike his fireballing predecessor, the late William S. Knudsen, C.E. hates to make snap decisions, likes to sleep on the hard ones. He seldom relaxes. When he does, he likes to tell stories from his vast fund of them, though his wife Jessie sometimes protests: "Oh Erwin, not that one again!" One of his favorites is about two Englishwomen who were being chauffeur-driven around Detroit in a G.M. limousine. Someone touched a hydraulic window-lift button by mistake, and the glass partition dropped, letting in a blast of air that billowed up the guests' skirts. "Gracious!" cried one, "don't you Americans ever do anything by hand?"

Beef & Peanuts. Wilson drives his own Cadillac in from Longmeadow, his rambling fieldstone house on Island Lake, Mich., burning up the highway like a preoccupied Barney Oldfield. Longmeadow is comfortably livable, with garage room for five G.M. cars and wall space for scores of pictures of the Wilson farms, horses, cattle, their six married sons & daughters and ten grandchildren.

At home, C.E. is up at 7 for a quick shower, breakfast and a chat with his wife. "It's about the only time I ever get to talk with Erwin," she says. When it comes to food, her husband is easily pleased; his favorites are chipped beef or salted peanuts, or both, any time of day. The Wilsons gave up most entertaining long ago; if C.E. showed up at functions at all, he was late, and loaded with work.

A month ago, on C.E.'s promise to be home without fail, Jessie ordered engraved invitations for their first big party in four years. A few days before it was to be given, C.E. called her from the office and told her she would have to give it alone. He had been asked to go to Germany for ECA and report back on what should be done with German plants. Mrs. Wilson called off the party, packed a suitcase with chipped beef and peanuts, and went with him. (She thriftily considered scratching out the date on the invitations for possible future use. The engraver didn't think it would "look right for Mrs. Wilson to do that," so she gave up the idea.)

Spills & Falls. Motormaker Wilson is a cattle breeder (Ayrshires), and at Windrow Farms, 20 miles from Longmeadow, has the largest private herd in Michigan. He used to play a fast game of tennis, still fishes and hunts occasionally, and is a good swimmer. He gave up ice skating after breaking his hip in a fall, and reluctantly gave up riding to hounds with the Bloomfield Open Hunt after breaking his shoulder in a spill from a balky hunter.

Now he gets his exercise by hiking through G.M. plants, where he enjoys listening to the syncopated rhythm of the production line. While walking some guests through Chevrolet's forge plant recently, he stopped to watch a young Negro feed long, red-hot rods into a machine which twisted them into knee-action coil springs. "Look," Wilson nudged a visitor. "He's going to let the rods pile up to show us how fast he can work. See how he gives the ends a little twist? He's our best man on this job because he's got rhythm in his soul." Then, admiringly, Wilson stepped up and told him so.

Where's Charlie? C.E. himself learned his production lessons early. Born in Minerva, Ohio, where his parents were schoolteachers, he had a childhood which many another boy would envy. The buff brick Wilson house was flanked by the homes of two locomotive engineers. They were his heroes who told him all about railroading and let him ride in their cabs.

From the time he saw his first light bulb, he wanted to be an electrical engineer. He sped through a four-year course at Carnegie Tech in three years, and at 18 went to work for Westinghouse Electric Corp., at 18-c- an hour. By the time he was 22, he had married (on $80 a month) and had designed Westinghouse's first motor for auto starters.

He always had his eye on the auto industry because "it's a dramatic business, you know." After World War I, he joined Remy Electric Co., a General Motors subsidiary, as chief engineer and sales manager. In nine years he was a G.M. vice president; five years after that he became Bill Knudsen's right-hand man. In 1940, when F.D.R. tapped Knudsen to direct defense production, Vice President Wilson stepped easily into the great Dane's shoes. Since then he has had two big projects: 1) mobilize G.M. for war (tanks, planes, jet engines, etc.), and 2) reconvert it for peace.

Team Play. Four months ago, completing the second job and anticipating this year's big thrust toward a competitive market, he gave his corporate team a transfusion of new blood. Dapper, grey-mustached Harlow ("Red") Curtice, 55, the man who had put Buick back on its feet (TIME, Sept. 20), was made an executive vice president and became the man widely regarded as Wilson's heir apparent--a not entirely comfortable spot, considering corporation rivalries.

Biggest and bluffest of the four executive vice presidents is balding, 61-year-old Marvin E. Coyle, known as "Mr. Facts & Figures." (Others: Ormond E. Hunt, 65, specialist in production problems, and Albert Bradley, 57, financial expert.) Last month Mr. Coyle went to Washington, where a Senate committee wanted to talk with him about G.M. profits (which hit an astronomical net of about $450 million last year). Neither apologetic nor apoplectic, Witness Coyle pointed out that G.M.'s prices had not been out of line, that there had also been "profits for the customer." He asked the Senators to step outside. There, he had parked a 1929 Buick and a 1948 Chevrolet. The Chevvy, faster, more powerful and a bigger & better car, actually sold for fewer dollars than the Buick.

In his shakeup, Wilson also juggled around the men who make the cars, the five car-division vice presidents, who are, in effect, big manufacturers on their own. They are: Cadillac's Jack Gordon, 48, crack engine man, who worked ten years on the new Cadillac engine; Chevrolet's W. F. Armstrong, 49, a cherub-cheeked man who is nervously cheerful about his big job of staying ahead of Ford; Buick's Ivan L. Wiles, 50, a tall, greying statistician who moved up from comptroller into Red Curtice's job; Oldsmobile's Sherrod E. Skinner, 52, a dark, heavyset, prim engineer; and Pontiac's Harry J. Klingler, 59, lean, angular and eager, a bow-tied salesman who always has one more funny story up his sleeve when Wilson runs out.

Masked Marvels. Last week Wilson's team had more than 1949 models on their minds. Their stylists and engineers were already busy on 1950 and 1951 cars. At G.M.'s Milford, Mich, proving ground, nameless masked marvels were already being rolled over, driven up & down hills and through water holes to see if they were sturdy enough for future production.

Throughout its designing process, G.M. gets plenty of free advice from the public. A lot of it is solicited by the customer-research office, which asks motorists what they like and don't like. It is a dull day for hulking Vice President Harley Earl, the corporation's stylist, when someone doesn't tell him he made the body too wide, or the fender pants too long.

Right now customer research is mulling public complaints that postwar cars are too long to get in garages, too low to see over the hood, too vulnerable amidships for safe parking and too costly to fix when they get smashed up. Some other customer suggestions: "A sun visor for the man in the middle . . ." "A sliding tray for lunching in the car . . ." "An automatic jack under each corner of the car . . ."

The Road Ahead. Some of the things the public wants it gets, but not always as soon as it wants them. Front seats have been widened because Americans insist on riding three in front. The main reason for the power built into U.S. cars is that motorists want plenty of pep and lots of speed and don't care about the gas bills.

On their drawing boards and in their research labs, G.M. and other manufacturers have everything from pancake engines to rear-engine cars and plastic bodies. The companies have not closed the door to any development. However, Chrysler's Airflow, similar to present cars but a flop in 1934, taught them that it is unsafe to get too far ahead of the public.

The industry is also toying with small cars (under $1,000), which 60% of U.S. buyers, according to a recent survey, would like. G.M. had plans for such a car two years ago and shelved them because of the steel shortage. Still, Wilson is not at all sure the small car is the answer. "The trouble with making a car two-thirds the size of Ford, Chevrolet or Plymouth," he says, "is that you take out value faster than you can take out cost. And if we could sell only 50,000 a year, a small car would cost more than a Chevrolet." In the broader economic view, he thinks it is probably better to produce enough new cars to knock down the used-car market to its proper level. Then the cheap car would be, as it was prewar, a good used car.

The next big automotive development may be a less exciting, evolutionary one: a perfected automatic transmission in the low-priced field. Whether, in the case of Chevrolet, it will be Hydra-Matic or Dynaflow, G.M. isn't saying. (A transmission engineer who has worked on both favors Dynaflow because it is "the first real step toward a fully automatic drive.")

The prospective customer in 1949 was interested in automatic transmissions, plastic bodies and rear engines. But what he really wanted to know was: When will prices come down?

There was no hope for that until the buyer's market had brought something like prewar sales conditions. Charles Erwin Wilson did not look for it until the prices of late-model used cars were at least 25% under new car prices. That seemed some time off; despite the used-car slump, most G.M., Ford and Chrysler "new" used cars were still selling at over the list prices last week. Thus, most automakers thought that car prices would stay where they were for a long time. As for Wilson, who wanted prices to come down, too, he said: "I don't expect to see Chevrolet selling [again] for $500 or $600 in my lifetime." And C.E., like G.M., appears to be in the best of health.

* Force of habit and force of salesmanship, as much as ability to pay, determine which car is bought. Over the years Buick has become the "doctor's car" because it looks prosperous but doesn't sound too expensive. Between Chevrolet, Pontiac and Olds, the choice is often dictated by the necessity of keeping up with the Joneses. And the snob appeal that sells many Cadillacs can work in reverse: many a man who can afford one buys a Buick instead, for fear the neighbors will think he is putting on airs.

* Meaning that the air-fuel mixture in the cylinder fills 7.25 times more space before it is compressed by the piston than after it is compressed for ignition by the sparkplug.

*Including (besides autos) Diesel locomotives, AC Spark Plug, Delco-Remy, Frigidaire, Hyatt Bearings, 26 others.

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