Offers He Couldn't Refuse

With money tight and auto sales plunging, George Nouhan, a partner in a Chevrolet dealership in Hamtramck, Mich., began advertising that he would consider anything, anything at all, as a trade-in on a new car or truck. From around the country, inspired offers have been pouring into Hamtramck, a factory town encircled by the city of Detroit.

Nouhan has made deals with customers proffering jewelry, TV sets and freezers. When one man showed up with a 1947 singleengine, canvas-covered aircraft, Nouhan sportingly went along for a test ride, then accepted the plane as a trade-in for $1,300. After the flight, Nouhan learned to his horror that the pilot had no license. The auto dealer even gave a Michigan farmer $1,000 in trade for a menagerie, sight unseen, of sheep, cows and chickens.

Without his trade-for-anything pitch, Nouhan figures that December's sales would have plunged even more than the 30% drop below normal. Recently he took a flyer of a different sort and allowed $4,000 for two leases on oil wells being drilled near Traverse City, Mich. A gusher, he points out, would ease a lot of the pain and frustration of trying to sell autos in the middle of Detroit in the middle of a recession.

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