Sales & Safety

Discussing auto sales and corporate profits with 1,200 stockholders at their annual meeting last week, Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II and President Semon E. Knudsen were in an optimistic mood. They had good reason to be. Auto sales, which accounted for 90% of Ford's quarterly revenues of $3.9 billion, are so strong that Ford's earnings will probably be close to the record year of 1965, when the company broke all sales marks and profits were $703 million.

That was all very good news, but another announcement by Ford was even more interesting. It involved safety. When the Government, after widely publicized congressional hearings two years ago, issued rules for safety equipment on cars, the automakers went along grudgingly. Lately, however, they have taken some of the initiative away from Washington and introduced reassuring safety features of their own. One of the most sophisticated was announced by the Ford company last week: on next year's Thunderbirds and Continental Mark IIIs, Ford will offer, for an optional $150, an "auto linear" system that computes away the danger of uncontrollable skids.

The system includes a small computer installed behind the glove compartment and sensing devices mounted inside each rear wheel. When one or both wheels stop rolling while the car is in motion, indicating a skid, the sensor flashes an instant message to the computer. Many drivers end in catastrophe after a skid because they freeze on the brake pedal instead of pumping it rapidly and repeatedly while steering their way out of the spin. The computer will do the proper pumping for them in the auto-linear system. With one impulse it takes control of the brakes away from the brake pedal; with another it applies its own braking at the rate of 35 to 40 pumps per second. When the skid is over and the wheels are rolling again, the system automatically returns braking control to the pedal.

Ford's new device follows an earlier safety announcement by rival General Motors. G. M. three weeks ago revealed that after two years of "top priority" work by its Fisher Body division, it was installing a guard rail on the doors of more than half of next year's models. The rail, actually an 8-in. section of high-strength sheet metal, will be welded out of sight inside the door. In the event of an impact on the side of the car, the rail will give way gradually but with resilience enough to deflect the oncoming automobile and cut down the danger to the occupants of the struck car. Of course, if the oncoming vehicle is a skidding Thunderbird or Mark III, the occupants presumably need not worry. Before the crash occurs and the G. M. guard rail has to prove itself, the Ford model's computer will have taken that car out of its spin.

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