The Dinosaur Hunter

(See Cover)

George Wilcken Romney, at 51, is a broad-shouldered, Bible-quoting broth of a man who burns brightly with the fire of missionary zeal. On the Lord's Day, and whenever else he can find time, he is a fervent apostle for the Mormon Church, in which he is a high official. But at all other times his missionary zeal is best defined by a plaque that hangs in the walnut-paneled Detroit office where he reigns as boss of American Motors. A facetious gift from the Cleveland Auto Dealers Association, it reads: "To George Romney, critic, lecturer, anthropologist, white hunter of the American dinosaur."

The American dinosaur, to Romney, is the long, low, chrome-laden U.S. auto, i.e., any car of his Big Three competitors. Where does he hunt it? At conventions, Rotary meetings, congressional hearings, wherever he can find a platform or a soapbox. He closes in on the quarry with a verbal barrage. Back and forth he rocks, clenching his fists, screwing his handsome face into an intense mask. Out shoot the words in evangelical, organlike tones; down flies his big fist to shake the dust from the table.

He even carries his own props. "This fellow here," he says, suddenly snatching a green china dinosaur from his briefcase, "is called a triceratops. He had the biggest radiator ornament in prehistoric history. It kept getting bigger and bigger until finally he could no longer hold up his head. He had a wheelbase of nearly 30 feet. The dinosaur perished because he got too big."

Then Romney pauses dramatically, juts his formidable jaw. "Who," he challenges, "wants to have a gas-guzzling dinosaur in his garage?" In the silence that follows, Romney races on to introduce the creature he would most like to see replace the dinosaur: American Motors' compact little Rambler.

Now, Ladies. With inexhaustible energy Romney last year traveled 70,000 miles across the U.S. to preach his message, sometimes sleeping and eating in his Rambler. He wears an alarm wrist watch to remind himself when to stop talking, but no one can remember a time when he ever heeded it. He likes to get up before women's clubs, fix the ladies accusingly with his blue-grey eyes. "Ladies," he says, wagging his finger at them, "why do you drive such big cars? You don't need a monster to go to the drugstore for a package of hairpins. Think of the gas bills!" No audience is too small for him. Caught in a taxi in the middle of a St. Louis traffic jam, he lectured the captive driver: "Now if we all drove small cars, we'd have a lot less trouble like this." His parting tip as he abandoned the cab and sprinted off on foot: "Next time try a Rambler."

Recently, when an American Motors executive showed up at an automobile manufacturers' meeting in place of Romney, a Big Three auto official asked: "Where's the boss?" Said the substitute: "He's making a speech." Yawned the Big Three man: "So what else is new?"

Through his talkathon, George Romney has brought off singlehanded one of the most remarkable selling jobs in U.S. industry. He has taken a company that only three years ago was on the brink of the grave, the butt of countless jokes ("Did you hear about the man who was hit by a Rambler and went to the hospital to have it removed?"), and given it a new and vibrant lease on life. More remarkable, he has done it all by selling an "economy" car that, in 1956, actually cost $4 more than the Big Three's cheapest car (it is now $311 cheaper), and that takes an expert driver to get the company-boasted gas mileage (more than 30 miles to the gallon). Snorts a General Motors executive: "Romney's been selling a dream--price and economy--but he's done a helluva good job at it."

Just as remarkable, Romney has proved a powerful competitor not only against the Big Three but against a flood of small imported cars, whose chief selling point is even lower cost and greater economy than the Rambler. This year the 60-odd foreign cars coming into the U.S. are expected to account for 560,000 units, or more than 10% of the U.S. market. But Rambler's sales have risen faster than any of the imports.

Fifth Place. Rambler has done so well that it is in fifth place in U.S. auto sales (after Chevrolet, Ford, Oldsmobile and Pontiac); its share of the market has risen from 1.6% to 6.2% in two years. This week it made its 20th successive increase in production in 1 1/2 years. Yet the public is still ordering Ramblers faster than American can produce them. Romney is in the midst of a $10 million expansion program that will lift the company's capacity to 440,000 cars a year.

For all Rambler's success, the Big Three are not hurting much. Last week the auto industry showed promise of the first spring pickup in sales since 1955, chalked up a record near two-year, midmonth high of 174,780 new car sales. Automen are confident of a 5,500,000-automobile year. That is good news for George Romney; the more car sales, the bigger the share he expects to get.

Rambler's success is writ large in the company's books. American's earnings after taxes for the first six months (ending this week) of its fiscal year will reach almost $35 million, or about $5.80 a share v. $26 million for the whole twelve months of the last fiscal year. For the entire year, American should earn upwards of $50 million, and may easily earn as high as $64 million, or about $11 a share, if Romney's confident expectation of 350,000 Rambler sales holds up. Earnings are piling up so fast that Romney is expected to ask the company directors to declare the first cash dividend since 1954, when it was 12 1/2-c-; this time it looks as if the dividend will be about 50-c-.

Pat Answer. All this success has raised an important question: Has George Romney won a quick victory at the price of losing a war?

His astounding sales and profits have spurred the Big Three to ready their own compact cars. General Motors is pressing its suppliers in hopes of getting into pilot production in May, is expected to be the first to introduce its compact car, a rear-engine job, in August or early September. Ford's economy car is scheduled for December introduction, Chrysler's for February, although both are considering bringing out their cars on a small scale in the fall to take the edge off G.M.'s lead.

G.M. is tentatively planning to call its compact car the "Invader." Both Ford and Chrysler, unknown to each other, had tentatively decided on the "Falcon." When they found this out, they had an amiable discussion; now Chrysler is thinking of giving Ford the bird and finding another name.

When the new cars wheel on to the market, what will become of American Motors? Some Big Three officials who wrote off the compact and small foreign cars only two years ago now have their own pat answer. Says one high-ranking automan: "Give the Big Three a year or so in the economy market, and Romney will be flat against the wall." But such crapehangers underestimate Romney's passion and skill in battling against odds.

Loyal Owners. Though Romney has loudly condemned annual styling changes (the Rambler has changed little in two years), he will meet the threat of the Big Three's new compact cars by giving Rambler a fresh, crisp look for 1960. If his sales should be hurt, no one doubts that he would completely restyle the Rambler in 1961 to make it competitive with anything that the Big Three can throw at him.

Moreover, Romney has a more subtle factor working in his favor. The success of his long crusade has made him a symbolic figure--a sort of Johnny Appleseed of the auto industry. He is besieged by pleas for help, love letters, poetry, suggestions that he run for Governor of Michigan or President of the U.S. Wrote a Los Angeles admirer: "With you as President, America would once again become a great power."

Around Romney has grown up an army of surprisingly loyal and enthusiastic Rambler owners. Some of them go so far as to call the Rambler "the most reliable car since the model T." Others take their pleasure in less rhapsodic praise. Women like it because its compact size (15.9 ft. long, 6 ft. wide, 108-in. wheelbase v. 17.3 ft. long, 6.4 ft. wide, 118-in. wheelbase for the standard Ford) makes it easy to handie in traffic, easy to park. The Rambler's unitized frame construction, in which body and frame are welded into a single unit (Ford, G.M. and Chrysler will also use this construction in their compact cars), eliminates most of the rattles and squeaks that often occur in other cars. With detachable front fenders and parts that are easily accessible, Rambler is easy and comparatively cheap to repair.

Hidden Ingredient. But the hidden ingredient of Rambler's success is the Big Three themselves. "They are," says George Romney happily, "my best salesmen." The Big Three have used every device of the designer's art and the engineer's skill to make cars steadily bigger, sleeker, more luxurious, almost self-operating. Surrounded by soaring fins, dazzling in their chrome, perched behind an engine of steadily, growing power, the U.S. driver had what Detroit says he wanted. But was he happy?

There were signs that he was not. Cars were often too big to park easily or put in a garage. Gas mileage dropped as gas prices rose. Much of the prestige that once went with a big car disappeared as new prestige articles became popular. Many consumers were apt to pass up Detroit's wiles, instead spend their money for recreation, housing, travel, boats.

In 1954 Detroit sniffed the first faint signs of dissatisfaction: a ripple of interest in imported cars. At first Detroit wrote it off as reverse big-car snobbery and the desire to have something different. Where the snobs led, the mobs followed. When foreign imports rose from .8% of the market in 1955 to 8% last year, it became clear that more than snobbery was at work.

Today no one lifts an eyebrow when his neighbor shows up in a foreign car, and no one need explain or apologize for driving one. With thousands of war babies coming of driving age and crying for their own cars, countless families have found the foreign car an inexpensive playmate for Junior--and a less precious article to entrust to freewheeling Mom. The number of two-car families has grown to 17% of all car owners. Now the three-car family is coming along; there are an estimated 375,000 such families.

Detroit had always brushed off demands for a lower-priced small car with the remark that motorists could buy a good secondhand big car for about the same price. But the purchase price proved not the chief factor. The secondhand car usually burned more gas and oil, needed more repairs, was less economical than the foreign car.

Best of Two Worlds. Profiting by this change, foreign manufacturers have poured into the U.S. market. West Germany led with the Volkswagen (1958 sales: 102,035), France sent the Renault (47,567), Italy the Fiat (23,000), Britain the Hillman (18,663). Japan has entered the U.S. market with its Toyopet, Sweden with its Volvo. Italy has just brought out a sleek new Fiat, and the Dutch announced only last week that they will soon bring their brand-new Daf into the U.S. market. Even the babies of the import family, e.g., West Germany's tiny Isetta and Goggomobile, found a market for around 10,000 cars last year.

Detroit was still not sure. It knew that it could not manufacture small cars in the U.S. for the same price, so it compromised. To cash in on the trend, it brought in cars from foreign companies in which the Big Three held big stock interests. General Motors imported the West German-made Opel and the British-made Vauxhall; Chrysler brought in the French Simca, Ford the English Prefect, Consul, Anglia. Since 1955, the Big Three have hiked imports of these foreign cars from 2,100 a year to 79,600.

What caused the Big Three to make up their minds was the take-off of Rambler sales in 1958. Belatedly, Detroit's Big Three (and little Studebaker-Packard) saw that there was a big market for the kind of car they themselves could make in the U.S. Dubbed a "compact" car to distinguish it from the tiny imports, the Rambler had offered the economy and easy handling of the foreign car plus much of the comfort, power and durability of the U.S. big car.

The Big Three quizzed Rambler buyers, discovered that economy of operation was twice as important in their choice as initial price, that the Rambler was bought no oftener as a second car (one in three sales) than Big Three low-priced cars. George Romney became a prophet with honor in his own country. In 1955 he had predicted: "By 1960, the compact car will be a top contender with present-type cars for the bulk of the market."

No Kissing. From his birth, Romney had little choice but to become a missionary of one kind or another. The grandson of a Mormon who sired 30 children by four wives, he was born into a monogamous family in Colonia Dublan, Mexico, where Mormons from the Southwest had settled 20 years earlier. When George was five, Pancho Villa drove the U.S.-born Mormons out of Mexico, and the family went to Los Angeles. In kindergarten, children taunted him mercilessly with the sneering cry "Mexican!" Said George one day: "Look, if a kitten was born in a garage, would that make it an automobile?'' The logic was overpowering; the kids let him alone.

George's father went broke five times, ended up as a builder in Salt Lake City. From the age of twelve, George worked to help support the family, still found time in high school to play football, basketball and baseball. There he met one of the few people ever to make him speechless: a stunning brunette named Lenore Lafount. Even for parents used to the mysterious fixations of adolescence, George was a caution. He decided that Lenore was the girl he was going to marry; just as he later could not understand why people hesitated to buy Ramblers, he could not understand why she did not jump at his offer.

He was so smitten that he followed Lenore whenever she went out with another boy, sat behind them in a movie or trailed their car. When she starred in a high-school play that involved kissing a boy, he insisted that there be no kiss at rehearsals, stuck around to make sure. "Sometimes I wondered if he was right for me," says Lenore, "but gradually I understood. He really cared."

Biggest Selling Job. At 19 he was selected by his church to spend two years as a Mormon missionary, took off for Great Britain. He spent 18 months in Scotland preaching the Mormon gospel from door to door, then went to London to preach for six more months from a soapbox in Hyde Park and at Tower Hill. The competition from other soapboxers for listeners was so tough that Romney teamed up with a red-bearded Socialist to catch an audience. They agreed to heckle each other's meetings regularly, thus both drew crowds. Says Romney: "I suppose some people thought I was eccentric. But I found it an illuminating, uplifting experience."

Back in the U.S., Romney spent a year at the University of Utah before heading for Washington in search of a job--and Lenore, who had moved there when her father took a Government job. Romney was hired by Massachusetts' Democratic Senator David I. Walsh as a speedwriter. When his speedwriting turned out to lack speed, Walsh kept him on anyway, put him to work keeping track of legislative matters.

When Lenore Lafount moved to New York to study acting, he spent all his weekends there. In 1930 he went to work as a lobbyist for Aluminum Co. of America; when Lenore got an offer from Hollywood (she was a bit player), he convinced Alcoa that he would be more valuable in their West Coast office. "I kept thinking," he says, "that some movie hero would get her." Lenore thought she wanted a career, but George's persistence was overpowering. Just as M-G-M offered her a three-year contract, he persuaded her to marry him instead, took her back to Washington as his wife. Says Romney: "It was my greatest selling achievement."

Short Trips. At Alcoa, Romney was frustrated by lack of opportunity to advance through the layers of executives. "As near as I could figure it," he says, "I would have been about go by the time I rose to the top." When the Automobile Manufacturers Association offered him a job as manager of its Detroit office, he jumped at the chance.

Romney's first big job for the A.M.A. was a study of car use, and it shaped his whole thinking about the role of the auto. The overriding finding was that the U.S. auto was being used less and less for long trips, more and more for short, essential trips, such as going to church, to work, to stores. Romney saw its meaning immediately: an inevitable trend toward more functional, basic transportation.

As director of the Automotive Council for War Production during World War II, Romney worked up a cooperative system that enabled companies to share one another's production advances. At war's end he performed one of his biggest services by persuading Government officials to cut short cumbersome contract-termination procedures that might have tied up auto plants for months. Instead, automakers began rolling out new cars almost immediately after war's end, thus averting heavy unemployment.

Out of Gas. After the war, Romney went to work for Nash-Kelvinator as assistant to President George Mason. The company, which had started in 1902 with Founder Thomas Jeffrey's Rambler, a one-cylinder runabout, was bought in 1916 by Charles Nash, president of General Motors, who introduced the first Nash in 1917. As solid and conservative as its uninspiring cars, Nash had for years been a profitable but never a spectacular company.

Romney picked Nash over other jobs because George Mason, like Romney, believed in the future of the smaller car. The company had started developing one before World War II, was ready to introduce a new, compact Rambler. Also in the works: the Nash Metropolitan (wheelbase: 85 in.).

Nash was convinced that it was on the right road with its small cars--but the company was running out of gas. The war had spawned many bad habits. Competition was rough. Mason made a move to keep the company going by merging Nash-Kelvinator with Hudson to form American Motors Corp., but before he could straighten the company out he died of pneumonia in 1954. Romney was elected president--and heir to a mess of troubles.

Pray & Work. His first act as president was to give his problems "thoughtful and prayerful consideration." Says he: "Prayer is not a substitute for work. First we have to do all we can ourselves to understand a situation. Then when we ask for help, sometimes it is very evident, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes we may well be helped by not getting a decision."

Having prayed, Romney got to work. He reorganized top management, retired older executives to bring in new hustlers. He built up American's selling organization by thinning out weak dealers, got rid of a sales manager who did not believe in the small car. Despite the belt-tightening, American lost nearly $7,000,000 in 1955, lost another $20 million in 1956. Bus drivers stopping at the entrance to the company's cathedral-like headquarters in Detroit called out: "All out for the old folks' home."

Romney cut out the ailing Nash and Hudson big-car lines, concentrated on the Rambler (the Metropolitan now sells about 1,000 units a month). "I knew we were on the right track," says Romney. "The question was: Would the car-buying public discover that in time?"

Wolfson at the Door. Just when American was in deepest trouble, Raider Louis Wolfson appeared on the scene, waving 200,000 shares of freshly bought American Motors stock. Wolfson had chilling news: he wanted to sell off the company's automaking facilities--and had $8,000,000 more to buy stock control if there was any argument. Wolfson was a tough in-fighter who had won many victories, but Romney treated him just as if he were another heckler in Hyde Park.

Romney glowingly described the future of American Motors, and Wolfson decided to let matters stand--if he could have a man on the board of directors. Romney also talked him out of that. But he knew he was living on borrowed time, with only a few months to go before bankruptcy--or liquidation--would swamp the company. Later, after Wolfson had bought 220,000 more shares, he wanted American Motors to finance his acquisition of other companies by trading stock. Romney flatly refused to go along. Then the public finally took to the Rambler. In late 1957 the company nudged into the black--and has been there ever since. Wolfson secretly sold his holdings, later said that American Motors stock was fully priced at 13. Last week it was selling at 35.

The Ghost. Never has Detroit seen an auto executive like Romney. In an industry noted for hard drinking and tough talk, Romney does not drink (not even tea or coffee), or smoke or swear. He is the president (i.e., bishop) of the Detroit stake of twelve Mormon churches, was the leader in building a new $750,000 Mormon tabernacle in suburban Bloomfield Hills. He gives 10% of his $100,000 salary, and sometimes more, to the church. He reserves his Sundays exclusively for church activities, often travels to other Mormon churches to set up conferences or deliver sermons.

"My religion," says Romney, "is my most precious possession. Except for it, I could easily have become excessively occupied with industry. Sharing responsibility for church work has been a vital counterbalance in my life."

Romney keeps his athletic frame (5 ft. 11 in., 175 lbs.) in top shape ("Our body is the temple of our spirit"), plays competitive sports with his two sons, Mitt, 12, and Scott, 17 (his two daughters are married ). The Romneys live in a $150,000 modern Swiss-chalet house (with a waterfall in back) that he built last year in fashionable Bloomfield Hills. (When he invited the auto industry brass for a housewarming, one G.M. wife remarked dryly: "George, you've bought yourself quite a gas guzzler.") He begins his day at 5 a.m., uses the first daylight hours, except when snow is on the ground, to play solitary golf with luminous balls at a country club next to his home. He keeps no score, dashes up and lunges at the ball, then chases it across the fairway at a fast jog. Caddies call him "the ghost."

He makes his daily 20-mile trip from home to office in about half an hour (most of his colleagues would rather walk than ride with him), rolls up his shirtsleeves for the day's work. American Motors headquarters is perhaps the most relaxed and informal in Detroit's auto industry. Romney often leaves his modest office (18 ft. by 18 ft.) to drop in on executives down the corridor. When he has anything important to say, he is not above calling them together, sitting down on the back of a chair to give a talk.

Once, while attending a musical in Manhattan with other company executives, he drafted the announcement of a major reorganization of American's divisions between the acts, using an aide's shoulder as his desk. When the British Broadcasting Corp. recently asked him to take part in a small-car panel, and submitted a list of ten questions beforehand, Romney summoned an aide. The aide began briefing him, but Romney cut him short. "Never mind the answers," he said. "Just give me the questions."

Change in Thinking. One big question for which Romney thinks he can create his own answer is the fate of American Motors after the Big Three roll out their compact cars. "They will come in partially at first," says Romney, "at about the same volume at which we operate. But sooner or later they will be in on an all-out basis, with no holds barred. If we are right, they will have no alternative."

By being "right," Romney means that the compact-car market is far bigger than other makers have previously estimated. One prime piece of evidence: the entrance of Studebaker-Packard's compact Lark, which has not hurt Rambler at all, even though the Lark is being turned out at the rate of 4,300 cars a week. A year ago, the Big Three's experts estimated the compact-and small-car market at 500,000 a year--at most. Last week they had raised their sights, expect the compact market to range from 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 within five years, exclusive of imports. Says Romney: "In five years the compact car will have at least half the auto market."

That market may be 7,000,000 cars by 1965, as the U.S. population explosion continues and all the World War II babies reach car-buying age. Thus, in a growing market, the Big Three's compact cars will not necessarily be sold at the expense of the Rambler.

No one expects that the market for small foreign cars will disappear, but most automakers estimate that it will grow no bigger. In fact, it may shrink. One indication is that foreign cars are no longer as hard to get as they once were, and order backlogs have dwindled. The Big Three's compact cars will also be competing against their own imports.

No one expects the big car to disappear, but its market, too, may shrink. While working on their compact car, the Big Three are gambling on continued demand for bigger, flashier cars by planning 1960 models that are longer, lower and wider--with new fin treatments. G.M.'s cars will be completely done over; the Ford, Edsel and Mercury will also be completely redesigned; while Chrysler is planning changes, its main emphasis will be on new interiors.

But there is little doubt that the big car's medium-priced lines will be hard hit by the approaching battle of the compact cars. Their sales, which were 37% of all sales only four years ago, last week were down to 25%--and still slipping. Most experts expect the new compact cars to occupy the spot once held by the Ford, Chevy and Plymouth before they got big enough to push out the medium-priced cars.

Auto Bigamists. In the upcoming battle Romney will have one great advantage that the Big Three cannot match: his low break-even point. He can turn out considerably fewer cars than now and still make respectable profits. In its last fiscal year American Motors netted its $26 million profit on sales of only 169,000 units. Ford and Chrysler together, on the other hand, sold 1,429,000 cars in the first nine months of 1958--and lost $61 million between them. Romney can also count on financial backing from his Kelvinator appliance division, which he has thoroughly overhauled; Kelvinator sales are up 18.7% over last year.

On the other hand, Romney will have a problem with some of his dealers. Some 30% of them are auto bigamists; they sell a Big Three car as well as the Rambler, will probably carry the Big Three's line of small cars (though only Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth dealers, of which Rambler has practically none, are expected to). Romney hopes that his hard core of 2,800 dealers will stick with Rambler. During the industry's 1958 slump, Rambler saved many of them; last year they made a 2.8% profit on their total sales v. .2% for the average U.S. dealer. Another reason for holding on: Rambler has a current resale price advantage of from $99 to $191 over a same-year Chevrolet, Ford or Plymouth.

Fall Flat? For all his confidence, Romney does not underestimate the threat he faces--or expect anyone to underestimate him. "We don't have research and development facilities in magnitude equal to the Big Three," he says. "But we have greater freedom and flexibility of operation. We're leaner. We're harder. We're faster. I've seen halfbacks, out in the clear, trip and fall flat with a sure touchdown in sight. That sort of thing could happen to anybody." Then Romney breaks into a wide grin: "But I don't intend to let it happen to us."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.