Deals & Developments

Faraday of Frigidaire. In 1926 Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. attended the Refrigeration Show in Manhattan's Grand Central Palace. He wandered from porcelain box to porcelain box, listening to the various degrees of humming, observing the efficiency of freezing power. One refrigerator caught his attention and he had a long talk with the man who stood beside it. The man was red-cheeked Axel Leonard Wenner-Gren, Sweden's No. 2 tycoon, great maker of vacuum cleaners and automatic iceboxes. He was standing beside the new refrigerator he had begun to manufacture. Mr. Sloan noted that it had no moving parts, made no noise, worked by means of a little gas flame applied to a solution of water and ammonia.

Mr. Sloan liked Mr. Wenner-Gren's refrigerator but not his price. Electrolux rights were sold to Servel. Inc., in which Mr. Wenner-Gren & Associates eventually became the largest stockholders. But last week Mr. Sloan must have remembered that visit for it became known that a division of General Motor's Frigidaire Corp. will soon offer the only other gas refrigerator in the U. S. It will be called the Faraday in honor of Michael Faraday (1791-1867), famed physicist. It is expected that sales will be handled in good measure by gas companies attempting to increase their own sales.

Venture's Finish. For ten years Durant Motor Co. of California made and sold Durants. At the head of the company for five years was Norman de Vaux, popular onetime transContinental bicycle rider. When the agreement with Durant terminated, Mr. de Vaux decided the company should make its own car. The company became de Vaux-Hall Motors Corp. and in April 1931, its first de Vaux car was finished. Although May production was scheduled at 4,600 cars, registrations for all of 1931 were only 4,808 and fortnight ago the company went into receivership.

Last week Continental Motors Corp., maker of engines for many pleasure cars and trucks, bought de Vaux-Hall's Michigan assets for $40,000, at the same time waiving a claim of $250,000 for unpaid bills. Continental plans to rush production on a new model de Vaux.

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