Business: Stutz Solo

The ears of the motor industry pricked high this summer when Charles Michael Schwab, master of Bethlehem Steel, returned to his old interest in Stutz Motor Car Co. of America, and when the company returned with a rush to wide public notice by announcing a new model with the famed old Stutz nickname “Bearcat” (TIME. July 27). Last week Stutz President Edgar Staley Gorrell made known what the industry did after pricking its ears. Not one, not two, not three or four but no less than nine separate motor companies had approached Stutz with offers to buy, sell, merge or be merged. To each & every such approach, President Gorrell & colleagues had firmly answered, “No!” Last week President Gorrell proudly added: “Stutz will stand alone. Stutz by itself has too satisfactory a position to warrant or demand a merger.”

Stutz’s position, so satisfying to itself, so appetizing to others, is this: Steelman Schwab, at the head of new and additional banking interests, has acquired 72 of Stutz stock. The company’s quick as-sets have increased this year by some $800.000. its surplus by some $2.500.000. At the end of last year the ratio of quick assets to liabilities was 1.6 to 1; today, 10.6 to 1.

Proud of new Stutz models is President Gorrell. The 1931 cars have an unusually low centre of gravity, 8 cylinders, dual-valve principle, four-speed transmission, hydraulic boosted brakes, extra rigid bodies. Big and solid and sleek, a Stutz car carries Stutz Associate Schwab. Other names for Stutz to conjure with: William E. Dodge Stokes and Frederic de Peyster, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Witherbee Black. Paul Whiteman and Herbert Bayard Swope. Cardinal Dougherty of Phila-delphia wears his red biretta in a Stutz.