Mail Order Motors

Long have mail-order houses like Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward & Co., sold by mail tires and other automotive accessories. Last week Sears, Roebuck decided to sell the automobile itself. Details concerning price and type of car had not been decided. Announcement was made, however, that the car would be manufactured by Gardner Motor Co., Inc.* and that Sears, Roebuck & Co. would distribute it.

Montgomery Ward & Co. is also considering marketing an automobile. Automotive bystanders, hearing that General Motors was experimenting with a small, airplane-motored automobile priced around $250, to be shipped in a box which would serve also as its garage, linked this rumored "aero-car" with the Montgomery Ward story. General Motors offices belittled the story, said that with 30,000 G. M. dealers there was no need for mailorder distribution of General Motors products. Asked whether General Motors was planning a car of the type described, the reply was that General Motors had so many experimental projects, each productive of many rumors, that it could not even dignify with a denial every report that reached its ears.

While U. S. automobile men were planning small cars, an English automobile man was announcing the invasion of the U. S. market with a small English car. The invader was Sir Herbert Austin; the car the Austin Seven. The Austin will be manufactured at Butler, Pa., by a U. S. branch of Austin Motor Co.

The Austin is a sort of British Ford. The Seven does not, of course, refer to cylinders but to horsepower. The Austin is only 9 ft. 2 in. long, 3 ft. 10 in. wide and weighs only 950 lbs. Production date and price have not been announced, but it is understood that the Austin will sell for less than $500. Financing of the U. S. company will be handled by Bulkley, Vallance & Co., of Manhattan.

The Austin represents the first serious foreign attempt at competing with the U. S. motor car. Said Samuel H. Vallance: "We are not proceeding with the theory that there is anything faulty with the American small cars. . . but in size and economy of operation the Austin Seven is in a class by itself."

* It is the Gardner company which will manufacture the new Ruxton front-wheel-drive automobile (TIME, June 10).