Sleek and Low Down

Two new starters entered the postwar automobile race last week.

The Tucker Torpedo, a completely new car designed by a completely new company (the Tucker Corp.), looks like a backward bullet. It has a 150-h.p., six-cylinder aircraft-type engine in the rear, a fuel-injection system eliminating the carburetor, a new type of drive shaft and transmission. It is expected to weigh some 800 lbs. less than the average car, cost from $1,500 to $1,800.

So far this dream car is still largely in the dream stage. Tucker President Preston Tucker has little more than a ten-year lease (beginning next March) on a plant in Chicago, a staff of 125, a pile of blueprints. All he now needs: 1) investors to buy a $20,000,000 stock issue still to be registered with the SEC, 2) production equipment, 3) materials.

The Willys-Overland postwar hopeful is a low-slung, short (104-in. wheel base), but ingeniously designed two-door six-cylinder sedan. It seats three in a front seat, two in the narrow rear seat. Other features: independent suspension of front wheels (no axle), and universal joints in the rear axle designed to take much of the bump out of bumps. Proposed price: around $1,300.

Willys does not expect full-scale production till next May. It hopes the car does better than the $21,000,000 stock issue which helped finance it. Offered at $100 a share last June, the new Willys preferred stock was cold-shouldered by old Willys stockholders, then snubbed by the general public. Last week, still holding 75% of the new issue, the underwriters (Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and 45 other firms) gave up trying to float the stock at $100, decided to let it find its own price level. The price promptly bounced down to $60. Price bid at week's end: $61 1/2. Total paper loss to underwriters: approximately $4,000,000.

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