Stylish Semantics

Showing the new Chevrolets to the press last week, General Motors Vice President Semon Knudsen tossed off the prediction that 1963 will be a 7,000,000-car year. When asked why he was so much more optimistic than Ford Division Chief Lee lacocca, who figures that sales will cool down from this year's anticipated 6,800,000 by half a million or so; "Bunky" Knudsen purred: "I think Lee has made his prediction in line with his product, and I am making mine in line with my product." Ford spokesmen quickly shot back that the official predictions of General Motors executives since 1957 have overshot the mark by an average 600,000 cars a year.

For all of this internecine gamesmanship, Detroit's basic message is that the two biggest automakers confidently expect two back-to-back years of more than 6,000,000 sales. Only once before, in 1959-60, has that been achieved. Auto stocks went up last week on Wall Street, helping to lift the Dow-Jones industrial average. It closed the week at 613.74, thus finally recovering all the ground lost since the hectic morning of Blue Monday, May 28.

If buyers take to the '63s, it will not be because of radical styling changes. Changes are few, though selling vocabulary has a new sound. Here is some of the jargon that customers will be hearing more of in Model Year '63:

Bright Work is the phrase for chrome, which got to be a nasty word in the industry a few years ago. It will dress up the '63 Ford and Mercury models, which are otherwise little changed. Ford is going back to the dictum that "chrome is everybody's favorite color." The General Motors Chevies will continue to go light on bright work.

Backlight is the rear window. Mercury's medium-priced Monterey will have one that opens. Press a button and the center section of the backlight slides down on two runners.

Cousins are look-alike cars, such as the '62 Oldsmobile F85 and the Buick Special. Cousins are out this year because the automakers have learned that customers often get confused by them, cannot decide which to buy, sometimes wind up buying neither. The Oldsmobile F85 has grown larger for '63, no longer resembles the Buick Special, which is basically unchanged from '62.

Fastback is a big word in Detroit this year. It denotes a car whose silhouette flows from windshield to rear bumper in a continuous, rounded, convex curve. Chevrolet's completely redesigned Corvette hardtop is a fastback. So is the Studebaker Avanti (TIME, April 13). Ford calls its '63 Comet and Falcon hard-tops fastbacks, but they are really only "semi-fastbacks" because their rear windows break the curve.

Pizazz, last year's big word, means jazzy touches for those who dream of owning a sports car. Pizazz includes stick shifts, grip bars on the dashboard, and bucket seats.

Bucket Seats, such as racing cars have, are what the sporty new Falcon compact convertible would be expected to have but doesn't. Since the Falcon convertible is pitched largely to the college set, Ford did some research and found out this: on the first date, 33% of the men and 42% of the women like to go out in cars with the widely spaced bucket seats. Among couples that have advanced to the stage of going steady, the percentage is down to 27% of the men and 15% of the women. And hardly any honeymooners want them. So the Falcon convertible will have a single-bench seat.

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