"Weird Collection"

To the mounting chorus of complaints about U.S. cars were added the voices last week of Harvard University's Economist Sumner Slichter and Labor Leader Walter Reuther. Slichter (who drives a 1951 Ford) expressed hope that automakers, burned by "the unattractiveness of the 1958 cars," now will "come forward with models that meet the people's fancy and small, economical cars that may become the rage." One trouble with the auto industry, Slichter advised the Senate Finance Committee, is "the weird collection of headlights, fins, tails, wings, etc., that is called an automobile in 1958." Reuther agreed with a Dutch newsman who thought that U.S. cars were getting "sillier and bigger" and added: "I think the auto industry should make a car which at least could be parked in a single block."

Editorialized the New Haven, Conn. Journal-Courier: "Obviously a mistake has been made in gauging the public's taste in automobiles. Yet the industry's leaders still go on insisting that the size, overpowered motor capacity and pretentious finlike protrusions of today's monsters of the highway are predetermined by public desire and not arbitrarily by the manufacturers. But mistakes have been made before in adjudging public wants. Actually, the turn by so many toward the tiny cars from Europe should have brought the truth home to an alert industry."

Last week reports swirled around Detroit that automakers were hustling to restyle their long-planned '59 models to satisfy the shift in public tastes, possibly bring out some small cars. Whether they will or not, automakers were seriously considering one big change to spur sales: they are expected to move up the introduction of '59 models. Detroit buzzed that divisions of at least two of the Big Three will stop '58 production in July instead of September, will drive in with the '59 models weeks ahead of schedule. General Motors plans to introduce many of its '59s in mid-Sepiember, one to two months earlier than last year. Chrysler Corp., riding in the red for 1958 (see State of Business), plans to show its 1959s by mid-October, instead of Nov. 1 as last year. Automen figured that if G.M. and Chrysler advanced their introduction dates, Ford would soon follow.

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