Low-Pressure Man

Six months ago few Detroit motormakers would have given a plugged nickel for Graham-Paige Motors Corp.'s chances of living out the year. The former style-setter had managed to build and sell just 6,000 1939-model cars for a $1,241,046 loss. Its working capital was almost gone. Its plant on Detroit's West Warren Avenue was shut.

At this black period of its 30-year existence Graham-Paige could have taken the easy way of bankruptcy. Instead, it: 1) got a $2,000,000 RFC loan; 2) raised an additional $300,000 from private sources; 3) made a deal with ailing Hupp Motor Car Corp. (1939 production: 1,000 cars).

With new machinery and the Hupp dies installed, the West Warren Avenue plant was expected to start manufacturing next week. Hupp will make its own motors. Graham will use Hupp dies for some of its own cars, make Hupp bodies and assemble Hupps. On hand were orders for 1,500 to 2,000 Hupps and Grahams. Top 1940 production was set at an optimistic 40,000 Grahams, 20,000 Hupps.

For this turn of affairs the two motor-makers can mostly thank an aging (64), roly-poly, apple-cheeked Swedish immigrant named August Johnson. Hired six months ago to get Graham-Paige off the hook, Executive Vice President Johnson has done the job almost singlehanded. But in Detroit, where motor executives are as swank and streamlined as their product, he is definitely out of place. He works in a shabby office, wears unpressed clothes, speaks with a thick Swedish accent, puts on no more side than a country storekeeper.

Storekeeper he was back in 1911 when he tied up with the motor industry by adding a side line of Mitchell, Case and Flanders automobiles to the stock of his general store at Troy, Idaho. They sold so well that he got rid of everything but the side line, moved to Spokane and became a distributor for Velie, Oldsmobile, Willys-Overland. Last spring he sold his Hudson agency for the Northwest for "about a half-million -- that is the closest I can seem to remember." Taking on Graham-Paige's Pacific Coast agency, he staggered President Joseph Bolden Graham by selling 600 cars (10% of Graham's 1939 output) in a few months. So Manufacturer Graham hired Salesman Johnson to run his company.

Already Salesman Johnson has devised an unconventional automobile sales policy. Instead of telling the public the retail price of his cars, he will let his distributors set their own (range $895 to $1,250). Now seeking (and getting) new distributors, of whom Graham-Paige had a mere 50 last year, he says: "Ve must have more vorkers in the vineyard." Informal, easygoing Salesman Johnson will upset tradition indeed if he makes good as a low-pressure man in a high-pressure industry.

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