The Battle of Detroit

(See Cover)

Into a large, cluttered Detroit studio one day 18 months ago strode a trim, lean man with the suave good looks of an ambassador and the cheery smile of a salesman. Around the room were barrels of clay and modeling tools; on the walls were blueprints of cars yet to be born. Only a handful of people were allowed in the room; few even knew its location. On a platform in the center stood the reason for the tight security. There for inspection by Harlow H. ("Red") Curtice, president of General Motors Corp., was the topmost secret of the greatest manufacturing corporation in the world--a full-sized, blue-and-ivory clay model of the Chevrolet for 1955.

Red Curtice had followed the progress of the new Chevrolet from first sketches to drafting board to quarter-scale model to clay mockup with all the anxious looks a young father-to-be bestows upon his wife. Now he slowly circled the car, squinting at its lines and lightly touching its smooth surface. When his eye lighted on a horizontal crease in the molding of the trunk, he shook his head. "That's not good," said Curtice. "You'll see that it casts a shadow on the bottom half of the lid. That shadow makes the car look higher and narrower. What we want is a lower automobile that looks wider." At the side of the car, Curtice stopped again. Why should the belt line (i.e., the line formed by the bottom of the windows) be straight and unbroken? When a designer explained that only the two-door models would have a racy dip in the belt line, Curtice suggested: "Don't you think we might try it on a four-door type, too?" As he left the room, molders set to work making the suggested changes. A few days later, Red Curtice was back to see the results. Said he: "That's it!" Those two words were the signal for G.M.'s Chevrolet division to spend some $300 million to turn the clay model into a car on the production line--the biggest expenditure for a new model in auto history.

The Opening Gun. The new Chevrolet --the first all-new model for 1955--was the opening gun in the 1955 battle of Detroit. For Chevvy 1955 will be a year of decision. This year Ford led Chevvy in sales for the first six months, and for the first time since 1935 stands a good chance to beat it out for the year. With his 1955 models, Red Curtice hopes to put Chevvy solidly ahead again.

For the entire auto industry, 1955 will also be a year of decision. The fight to sell cars will be the roughest in history. To get ready for it, the automen have spent $1.3 billion on the greatest number of model changes ever. Not only are Ford and Chevvy at each other's throats, but Chrysler is out to get back the big share of the market that it lost to both of them this year. And for the smaller companies, 1955 may well answer a life-or-death question: Can they compete with the industry's giants, or will they have to merge into a new giant?

No matter who comes out on top, the consumer will benefit in the best free-enterprising tradition. He will get better cars for less money, either by outright price cuts or higher trade-in allowances.

Perfume & Promotion. This week the Chevrolet began its competition for the customer's dollar in a circus atmosphere whooped up by the country's 7,500 Chevrolet dealers. Outside the Chevrolet agencies, hundreds of machines spewed forth varicolored bubbles by day; by night huge spotlights swiveled their beams across the sky. Dealers hung up miles of flags, banners and placards, hired clowns and calliopes, rented dinner jackets for their salesmen, splashed teaser ads through the press.* They spent $3,500,000 on promotion, giving away 2,131,000 balloons, 1,016,920 bottles of Prince Matchabelli perfume, hundreds of thousands of pencils, yardsticks, potholders, key cases and beanies. With the help of all this razzle-dazzle, Chevrolet Division Manager Tom Keating expects 20 million people to troop through his showrooms in the next few days.

What they will see is an auto that is new from rubber to roof, with the large-car look of an Oldsmobile. Long before his predecessor at G.M., Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson, made his crack about bird dogs and kennel dogs (TIME, Oct. 25), Curtice described the new Chevrolet as having "a hound-dog look"--long, low and forward-plunging. The same overall length (196 in.) as last year, the new Chevvies are lower by 2.6 in. to 6.3 in. (for the station wagon), have two inches more hip and shoulder room inside. With wrap-around windshields, they have 18% more glass area and visibility; the station wagon even has wrap-around rear windows. Tubeless tires are standard equipment. Optional: power brakes that keep their power even when the engine is stalled, power steering, pushbutton windows, a two-way power seat, and an air-conditioning unit (about $150 extra) that fits under the hood, thus takes up no baggage space.

For the first time Chevvy has a V-8 engine of 162 h.p. With special carburetor and exhaust (available as optional equipment), it can be stepped up to 180 h.p. Chevvy's six-cylinder engine has been boosted from 115 to 136 h.p. Prices will be about the same as this year.

Variable Pitch. While Chevrolet is G.M.'s biggest news for 1955, its four other auto divisions have spent another $300 million to retool, by far the biggest new model outlay in G.M.'s history. This week Pontiac's 4,047 dealers are also showing off their 1955 entries. The new Pontiac is 2 1/2 in. lower and as much as 3.5 in. longer than this year's. The new V-8 engine has stepped horsepower up from 127 to 180, and an optional carburetor will boost it to 200 h.p. Buick, Olds and Cadillac, which made complete model changes last year, have only face-lifted the models to be shown in the next few weeks. But there are dozens of engineering changes. Cadillac has a 260-h.p. engine, up from 230. In its new Dynaflow transmission, Buick has new, variable-pitch blades that change their angle as the accelerator is pressed to the floor, adding a big extra kick for passing. And the Century and Roadmaster have boosted horsepower from 195 and 200 respectively to 236 h.p. In a few months Buick and Olds will both have a brand-new model: a four-door hardtop that has the sporty look of the two-door models, plus the roominess of a sedan.

Red Curtice's new models will meet some fender-crunching competition from every other automaker. Ford has spent $185 million for the first all-new Ford body since 1949. The new car is 1 in. lower than this year's, and will have wraparound windshields. V-8 horsepower will be stepped up from 130 to around 160. Ford has also spent millions on its powerful (up to 200 h.p.) new Mercury. Fanciest eye catcher: the Montclair, a new road-hugging car that will be close to the lowest in the industry. Last week brothers Henry, Ben and Billy Ford gave everyone a taste of the rugged kind of competition that they intend to serve up. They showed off their Thunderbird sports car and put a price on it of $2,695, f.o.b. Detroit, a full $500 below Chevrolet's Corvette.

To battle G.M. and Ford, Chrysler Corp. has spent $250 million (TIME, Oct. 25). Studebaker-Packard has spent $120 million for new bodies and a new V-8 engine for Packard. Nash and Hudson (now American Motors) have redesigned, installed V-8s in their larger models to get a bigger share of the market than this year's 100,000 or so cars.

How many cars do the automakers hope to sell in 1955? For the last two years, the predictions of Red Curtice have been right on the button. Says he of 1955: "Sales will be somewhat better than this year's estimated 5,300,000 cars." As for G.M., it should keep its 49.9% of the market, biggest it has ever had.

Early this year, while fears of recession swept the U.S., Optimist Curtice boldly announced a $1 billion expansion program for G.M. This week, in his third-quarter report, Red Curtice showed that his optimism was warranted. Largely because of a 30% drop in defense business, G.M.'s sales were down from $2 billion in 1953 to $1.8 billion. But profits, helped by lower taxes, were up 14%, to $160 million. Earnings a share were $1.79 v. $1.57 in the third quarter of 1953, or a nine-month total of $6.58 a share v. $5.08 in 1953.

Out of an Ad. The man who has given General Motors its record share of the auto business* looks as if he just stepped out of a Cadillac ad. His 5 ft. 9 in., 155-Ib. frame is usually clad in flawless blues and greys; at 61, his once brick-red hair and pencil-line mustache are grey, but his bright blue eyes sparkle like a newly polished car, his smile is as broad as a Cadillac grille. His voice is quiet, his manner calm. But under the Curtice hood there throbs a machine with the tireless power of one of his own 260-h.p. engines.

For all his energy, Harlow Curtice never seems to be in a hurry. From his 30-ft.-square office in Detroit's General Motors Building, he runs G.M.'s worldwide empire with an informality that is almost offhand. His long workdays (8 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m.) are crammed with visits from admen, engineers, lawyers, production men and especially G.M. dealers, to whom his door is always open. Several times a day he may drop in on G.M.'s styling section to see how the latest dream cars are coming along.

Curtice has a Farleyesque memory for names, stores up facts and figures like a Univac computer. Says one associate: "You'd better not tell him something one day and something else another day, even if it's a year later. But if you're working like hell, he is quick to forgive mistakes." He talks out problems with associates, listens to every angle, then makes his decisions quickly and without worry. Says Curtice: "The best committee is the committee of one." But Curtice's greatest talent is his innate knowledge of what will tickle an auto buyer's fancy--and open up his pocketbook. Says G.M.'s Chief Designer Harley Earl: "Curtice is the best shopper we've ever had."

Hot-Rodder. Curtice has a hot-rodder's feeling for cars, likes to trick up his own cars with new gadgets and styling changes. While former President Charlie Wilson was content to travel around in a sedate Cadillac sedan, Red Curtice likes to dash around his home town of Flint in a sporty grey-blue Buick Skylark. (He had it fitted with a wrap-around windshield long before it came out on the production models.) For Vice President Earl, who has built up the greatest industrial designing organization in the world, Curtice is a one-man poll to test new ideas. The trick, says Curtice, is simply to find the proper balance between the new and the old. Says he; "We must 'create' used cars by bringing out new ones. But the new cars must not be too radical, or they will not sell. Automobile owners are among the most conservative people in the world."

On dozens of occasions, Curtice has displayed his knack for picking automotive winners. In 1940 he brought out the first two-tone car. In 1948, for a special investment bankers' show, Curtice ordered a Buick combining the all-weather protection of a coupe with the sporty look of a convertible. The car was the Buick Riviera, the nation's first mass-produced hardtop convertible, a style that proved so popular that it now accounts for 54% of Buick's sales.

A few years ago, a G.M. designer in his spare time tricked up his Buick with holes in the fender and flashing lights inside to create an impression of supercharged power. Curtice happened to see the car. Result: the next models were the three-holer and four-holer cars. When Harley Earl first showed Curtice the panoramic windshield on the experimental Sabre and Buick XP-3OO, Curtice's reaction was typical: "Boy, that's good. Let's put it into production." When G.M. engineers experimented with such devices as the foot parking brake and Dynaflow transmission, Curtice, the perfect customer, tried them and quickly ordered them on production models. One Curtice disappointment has been Chevrolet's glass-fiber Corvette, which he ordered Chevy to make to compete with foreign sports cars. He hoped to sell 1,000 a month, but production is down to only 300 a month because of slow sales. Probable reason: buyers cannot get the car without also buying $500 in extra equipment.

To make the changes he wants, Curtice can also find corner-cutting tricks. When he first saw sketches of a Buick that carried the fender line back into the body for the first time, he did not wait for the year-long process of changing dies. Instead, he devised a method of bolting extra panels of metal on to the old body to get the new style into his showrooms as quickly as possible. While looking over one recent model, Curtice spotted a flaw in its lines, was told that it was far too late to do anything about it. Said he: "To hell with the time element; let's make the change."

On the Spot. Curtice is a great believer in on-the-spot decisions when he has seen for himself what all the facts are. When he left for a quick tour of G.M.'s European plants six weeks ago, his plans were to spend $172 million expanding plants in England and Germany. But in Belgium, while touring G.M.'s assembly plant at Antwerp, Curtice was told that $6,000,000 was needed for more space and equipment. There had been no plan to expand in Belgium, but Curtice, in typical fashion, agreed to appropriate the money. The Swiss assembly plant, he learned, needed $3,500,000. Go right ahead, said Curtice, the money will come through. G.M.'s Swedish, French and Danish subsidiaries asked for money, and Curtice promised to work it out.

As the first G.M. president to make such a grand tour of foreign plants, Curtice rang up good press notices everywhere. Said Britain's Motor Trader in clipped accents: "America could export more of this type of American." Said Berlingske Tidende, Denmark's leading daily, after a Curtice press conference: "It was really felt that here was a magnate who had succeeded in performing the miracle to preserve his soul in company with an annual turnover of 70 thousand million kroner."

$637,233 a Year. Curtice's well-preserved soul is evident in everything that he does. As the highest-paid man in industry ($637,233 in salary and bonuses last year), he commutes to Detroit from Flint, where he lives simply with his wife in an eleven-room house that is cared for by only one servant. (Daughters Dorothy Anne, 21, and Catherine Dale, 17, are away at school; Mary Leila, 25, is married.) On weekends he likes to drop in on the nearby Buick division, shoot the breeze with anyone from a sweeper to a foreman.

His pleasures are simple; near the top of the list is a good game of poker for sizable stakes with neighbors and G.M. friends. He likes to dance (last summer he and his youngest daughter won a prize at Cape Cod, Mass., where he goes on vacation). Twice a year, he gets away on hunting trips, always insists on walking every field himself just to make sure that no bird is missed. Anyone who starts talking business with the boss on these occasions is likely to be presented by the rest of the group with a well-polished aluminum apple made in a G.M. shop.

Curtice enjoys practical jokes, even when they are on him (his companions once brought along a wired blanket and gave him a tooth-tingling shock when he sat on it). At a party after he became president of General Motors, everyone thought it a great idea to present him with a chef's outfit to kid the boss--the small-town boy who made good--about one of his early jobs.

Short Orders. Harlow Herbert Curtice was born (1893) in the little crossroads town of Petrieville, Mich., the second son of a wholesale-produce man. (Curtice's older brother, LeRoy, has been an hourly-paid paint-and-metal inspector at G.M.'s Fisher Body plant since 1936.) After graduating from high school, Curtice worked for a year in a local woolen mill, saved up enough to go to Big Rapids' Ferris Institute. To pay his way, he worked as a short-order cook in the Blue Front Cafe. Eager to get on in the world, he quit Ferris after two years, moved to Ma Kelleher's boarding house in Flint, where he got room and board for $3 a week. He answered an AC Spark Plug want ad for a bookkeeper, was asked in the interview what his ambition might be. Said the brash young man to his future boss: "Your job, within a year."

Red Curtice meant it. He worked nights, poked through the plant getting to know production and engineering, volunteered to do some selling. He soon caught the eye of John Lee Pratt, then a member of G.M.'s presidential staff and a director since 1923. Says Pratt, now 75: "Some of these accountant fellows just sit and look at pieces of paper. That young redheaded fellow started going down in the plant and found out what determined his costs. He had to learn the technical side of the business, and he went out and learned it." Within a year after he was hired, at the age of 21, Curtice was made controller of AC Spark Plug.

Middle-Age Spread. With time out for a World War I stint overseas in the field artillery (he came out a private first class), Curtice rapidly rose to AC assistant general manager, vice president, and, at 36, president. Then, in 1933, came an opportunity born of disaster. General Motors' Buick, for years a notable success as the safe, sound and respectable "doctor's car," was in dire trouble. It had gone up in price, fallen behind in styling, grown fat and heavy (one model was inelegantly nicknamed the "pregnant Buick," the "bedpan Buick" and the "bathtub Buick"). When Depression struck, it hit Buick square in its middle-age spread, and Buick's share of the auto market dropped from more than 8% to 2.9%, a mere 43,809 cars. G.M. directors talked darkly of dropping Buick from the company, but Executive Vice President William Knudsen, the Great Dane, took another view. He aimed to "get Buick off relief," and thought the man to do it was Red Curtice. Other G.M. brasshats were skeptical, since Curtice had had no auto experience. Said Knudsen: "Vait and see."

Curtice's first decision was to "make a car to sell at lower cost"; his second was to get Harley Earl, who was driving a Cadillac at the time, to design a Buick "you would like to drive." The result was a new, light and cheap Special. As the new car was being readied for production, Curtice swung around the country getting to know his harried dealers, talking over their problems and boosting morale. On many a trip, he took his wife and even his mother, who played poker with Curtice and his associates between stops.

"Dressed for a Party." Back in Flint, Curtice weeded out the deadwood, kept the good. Under his predecessor, every section of the Buick operation went its own way, with production problems being blamed on engineering, engineering problems blamed on styling, and so on down the line. Curtice called in the heads of all departments on major decisions so that each might know the others' problems and help in their solution. He also had the ads changed to plug the theme that Buick was an auto for the young, with such headlines as DRESSED FOR A PARTY--POWERED FOR A THRILL!

The Curtice medicine soon took effect. In a year Buick's sales rose 44% to 63,067, in two years more to 160,687. In the black days of 1938, while the rest of the industry slumped 47%, Buick's sales slipped but 19%, and Buick went from sixth to fourth in the business. By 1941 it had sales of 308,616, or 8.4% of the auto market.

Under Curtice in World War II, Buick turned out 75,000 Pratt & Whitney engines, 2,507 M18 tank destroyers and an arsenal of artillery shells. By the time Charlie Wilson picked him as his right-hand man in 1948, Curtice's interests ranged over all of G.M. But in his new job as executive vice president, Curtice could apply one of his greatest talents as overall styling boss of the corporation.

Doodlers & Dreamers. Designing a new car involves an arm-long set of finely balanced equations, and enough unknowns to baffle even the most imaginative fortune teller. In its styling section, adjacent to the head office in Detroit, G.M. has a staff of 675 trying to find the answers. Some of them work in the "future" studio, a place where stylists can doodle their fondest dreams on paper, even though there is no chance of their coming true. With the practical dreamers, engineers work side by side to make sure their ideas can be translated into production. To spot any engineering problems, the quarter-size clay models are fitted with movable plastic engines, gearboxes, seats, etc.

To find out what the public wants, G.M.'s customer research department questions 2,000,000 people a year by mail on their likes and dislikes. G.M.'s traveling Motorama provides another fine source of information, with interviewers stationed by every experimental car. The results are all carefully tabulated, passed along to styling and engineering and to President Curtice, who studies them carefully. The surveys are important, e.g., pushbutton doors were made standard equipment when the research department found that 70% of the people interviewed preferred them to handle doors. But surveys would be worthless without a sure styling instinct. Last year Harlow Curtice looked over the roomful of experimental cars, picked the experimental Pontiac and Chewy station wagon as the cars the public would like best. His stylists disagreed, but Curtice's judgment was borne out by the research department poll.

Too Big? Such careful planning and coordination between styling, engineering, production and sales have helped make General Motors the world's biggest manufacturing company, with 583,000 employees in 152 plants, and almost as many stockholders. One of its bulwarks is its depth of executive talent. Groaned a competitor: "Like Notre Dame, they've got ten men for every position." While Harlow Curtice has not named anyone to take his old job as the president's right-hand man--and thus be his heir apparent --there are many who might ultimately step into the president's shoes.*

Size, however, has its problems as well as its rewards. From a political standpoint, G.M. offers a tempting target. In the last two years under Curtice, while G.M.'s share of the auto market has risen from 41.7% to 49.9% (and Ford's has gone from 22.8% to 30.8%), Chrysler's share has plummeted from 21.3% to 13.5%. The former independents, which in 1952 accounted for 13.2% of auto sales, have dropped this year to 5.8%. Studebaker and Packard, Kaiser and Willys, and Nash and Hudson have had to team up to stay in business.

The Eisenhower Administration, which does not view bigness in itself as cause for antitrust action, is nevertheless considering eight possible auto suits involving such things as dealer contracts, finance-company tie-ins and sales of parts. And under an Administration less friendly to business, any new boost of G.M.'s share of the market might well bring an all-out antitrust attack.

If it wanted to, G.M. could probably drive Chrysler and the former independents to the wall by cutting prices low enough. Harlow Curtice has no intention of doing so--and for the sake of national security, no Administration would sit idly by and watch if he tried.

Thus 1955 will be a year of decision for General Motors as well as the rest of the auto industry. Harlow Curtice does not plan to help his competitors compete. As he says: "I don't see how we can stop people from buying G.M. cars." But he fervently hopes that they will be able to stand up to his Goliath and fight--and thus keep the long arm of the Government from mixing in the auto industry. Curtice thinks his competitors can do it, and so do they. For automen 1955 may well provide the answer.

* One of them showed a mustached international smoothie, outfitted with Homburg and umbrella, whispering mysteriously to an innocent-looking girl: "I could arrange to import for you an authentic set of secret, smuggled photographs of the new Chevrolet!" Cautioned the ad: "Beware of impostors, Continental bounders and novel approaches. The new Motoramic Chevrolets will be seen by everybody at the same time."

* While most of his time is spent with the auto divisions, Curtice also runs Frigidaire, the diesel divisions (G.M. is the biggest U.S. maker of diesel locomotives) and the rest of G.M.'s 4O-odd divisions. Among them: Delco radios, motors, etc.; Allison engines; AC Spark Plug.

* Among them: Executive Vice President Louis Clifford Goad, 53, who, like Curtice, was general manager of AC Spark Plug; Vice President Roger Kyes, 48, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, who now runs G.M.'s appliance divisions and G.M.C. Truck & Coach; Vice President Ivan Wiles, 56, who followed Curtice as Buick boss and grabbed third place in sales this year; Vice President John F. Gordon, 54, head of the body and assembly group and a fast breaker of bottlenecks; James E. Goodman, 49, vice president in charge of Fisher Body; Vice President Sherrod E. Skinner, 58, head of G.M.'s accessories group, who did a crack job in getting G.M.'s Livonia transmission plant back into production after its fire last year.

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