Forward Looking at Chrysler

A year ago, feisty Detroit Lawyer Sol Dann, self-styled "gadfly" of the Chrysler Corp., consumed 70 solid minutes of Chrysler's annual stockholders' meeting with vividly phrased denunciations of the company's management. Last week, at Chrysler's 1962 meeting, Dann held himself down to a scant 43 minutes--which he filled with innumerable punning compliments ("Love begets love") to Chrysler's new management team headed by Chairman George Love, 61. Mused Love wryly: "I wonder what he would have done if my name was Smith." If Love's name were Smith, stockholders would probably be just as pleased by the solid, dollars-and-cents evidence suggesting that long-ailing Chrysler is finally on the mend. Where it lost a staggering $21.9 million in the first quarter of 1961, Chrysler last week reported a $1.3 million profit for the first three months of '62. Though the company's first quarter sales of $498 million were up 15% from a year ago, its shiny new profit stemmed primarily from President Lynn Townsend's hard-eyed cost cutting (TIME, Aug. 4) and was all the more encouraging because it was made at a time when Chrysler's share of the U.S. auto market had dropped to a postwar low of 9%. If it could keep costs at the new, Townsendized level and recapture even a part of its "traditional" 17% of the auto market, Chrysler's comeback would be assured.

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