Business: Satisfactory Results

Between March 5 and March 12 U. S. automobile manufacturers spent $1,250,000 and their dealers spent perhaps an equivalent sum in the first concerted drive the industry has ever put on—National Used Car Exchange Week (TIME. March 7). Because there are 46,000 registered automobile dealers in the U. S. and an indeterminate number of independents with lots full of jalopies, statistics of their trade are never very precise. Estimates of the used car glut on March 5 ranged from 700,000 to 1,000,000, with the latter figure probably the more accurate (normal: 500,000). Last week, as reports of the drive poured into Detroit, Automotive Daily News estimated that 175,000 used cars had been sold. This reduced dealers’ inventories by 60,000 cars, gave them an aggregate $50,000,000 in business. Other figures:

Used cars sold averaged roughly $275 each and at least a third of the deals were “clean” (i.e., cars sold without a car being traded in). Sales ran from two and one-half to three times the normal weekly turnover. Best sellers were the highest-priced models. Ford dealers sold an estimated 57,000 units, General Motors 65,000, Chrysler 30,000. Last week WPA announced that for the first time in four months Detroit relief rolls fell. Said Ford Sales Manager John Raymond Davis, who conceived the used car drive: “From 30% to 60% of the transactions made by our dealers were for cash. This is a healthy situation. . . . In other words, there was no straining of credit to get these satisfactory results.”