STATE OF BUSINESS: Encouraging Clues

Businessmen looking for clues to 1958 prospects closely watched pre-Christmas retail and auto sales. Both were encouraging. On the day after Thanksgiving, sales at Manhattan’s Gimbel Bros, jumped nearly 8% above the post-Thanksgiving day last year. Chicago’s State Street was so jammed with shoppers that the downtown police detail was doubled to 100 to control the crowd. In downtown Atlanta, retailers said sales were well ahead of last year. Los Angeles stores reported “very good” business.

From Detroit, first reports showed that the new autos are selling well enough to bolster automakers’ expectations of a 6,000,000-plus car year. General Motors’ Chevrolet division, gearing production closely to sales, last week rolled out 38,900 cars v. 31,729 in the Thanksgiving week of 1956, and Cadillac output is 14% ahead of last year’s rate.

In the first 18 days of Ford Motor Co.’s 1958 model year, dealers sold 85,222 Fords v. 81,277 last year, kept their lead over Chevrolet. Sales of Lincolns and Continentals from Nov. 1 to 20 hit 2,481 cars, 23% ahead of last year. But Ford’s Edsel is riding a bumpy road. Sales dropped from 11,655 in September to 7,601 in October. Last week Edsel lost its only Manhattan Dealer, Charles Kreisler. Said he: “We couldn’t maintain volume large enough to make it profitable.”

Chrysler Corp.’s heavy stock of 1957 models cut into its 1958 sales (although the industry as a whole had whittled ’57 stocks to a manageable 240,000). Plymouth sales were just fair, Dodge and De-Soto slow, but Chrysler and Imperial were up. Percentagewise, best gains were made by American Motors. Sales of its Rambler in November’s first 20 days climbed to 6,696 v. 4,422 in 1956.