Business: Automobile Salon

The opening of the French automobile salon last week in Paris attracted a record first day attendance, despite the conservative tone of the display as a whole.

President Doumergue, accompanied by members of his cabinet, other notables, formally inaugurated the exposition. After the ceremony, he examined exhibits appraisingly, impartially. Standing proudly before their exhibits, greeting M. Doumergue, were such figures of the French automotive industry as Louis Renault, Baron Citroen. M. Farman. M. Doumergue included U. S. stands in his tour, paused, shook the hands of U. S. officials, left the hall.

There were few freaks on exhibit: an amphibious Peugeot, a motor boat on wheels, ready to take to the water by a simple shifting of gear; the Bleriot wood-burning car (TIME, Oct. 11) generating gas from fagots; a Fiat with an oak-mahogany paneling, interior drive, 26-h.p.; an electric Parville, claimed to run 930 miles without a recharged battery.*

One of the features of the salon was the new Erskine Six, labeled “the first European type of six-cylinder car built in America.” The machine is named for Albert Erskine, president of the Studebaker Corp., speeds 60 miles an hour, nets 25 miles to the gallon. Mr. Erskine was not in Paris to see his car support the U. S. invasion of European markets. At his desk in the home of Studebaker at South Bend, Ind., he was thinking politics, writing a telegram to

Editor Thomas Adams, offering to head a financial committee to investigate Klan “super-government” in Indiana.

Fourteen hundred firms, including those selling accessories, were represented, nearly four hundred more than were displayed at the record salon of 1924.* Twenty U. S. firms had exhibits. In the crowded auditorium were famed Presidents Alfred P. Sloan Jr. of General Motors, H. H. Bassett of Buick, Lawrence C. Fisher of Cadillac, Myron E. Forbes of Pierce-Arrow, moving warily through the throngs, surveying their displays with a just pride.

*Other European cars on exhibit included: (French) Hispano-Suiza, Renault, Delange, Citroen, Voisin, Panhard; (English) Rolls-Royce, Daimler, Sunbeam, Bean, Wolsey, Humber; (Belgian) Minerva; (Italian) Isotta-Fraschini, Ansaldo ; (German) Maybach, Mercedes, Rumpler, Benz.

*The New York Automobile Show will take place Jan. 8 to 15; the Chicago Automobile Show Jan. 29 to Feb. 5. Drawings for exhibition space in both were completed last week and space allotted to 45 makes of motor cars, 19 kinds of trucks and several kinds of taxicabs.