Compacts in High Gear

Crowding the freeways, chug-a-lugging ever costlier gasoline, the standard-sized (which is to say, huge) U.S. car becomes a little less appropriate every day. Though new car sales generally have dipped about 20% below last year's totals for the past two ten-day periods, compact and subcompact sales are up more than 20%. Latest figures show that their share of the U.S. market has increased from 22% only four years ago to 40% now. Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford predicts that small cars will soon take 50% of the market.

Six out of ten small cars selling in this country are made in the U.S., up from only four out of ten in 1969. Demand is so heavy that some would-be buyers have to wait. Dealers report that GM Vegas, American Motors Gremlins and Ford Pintos are in uncomfortably short supply. Chrysler's Duster, a somewhat larger compact, is also moving fast.

Buyers are adding many expensive options that can almost double the price of a $2,200 subcompact. The extras include "deluxe" gas caps, fake woodgrain treatments for station wagons, air conditioning and more powerful (and gas-thirsty) engines. For $300, Custom-glass, Inc., of Costa Mesa, Calif., will even convert a Ford Pinto into a "Mini Mark IV" Continental by revamping its rear end and giving it a nose bob. Why go to all that bother to doll up a compact with all the frills? Detroit's backseat psychologists have this explanation: the U.S. consumer figures that buying a small car makes sense both economically and ecologically, but he does not want his neighbors to think that he is trying too hard to save a buck

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