AUTOS: The Big Road Show

Henry Ford II gripped a steering wheel, nudged General Motors President Harlow Curtice and beamed happily: “It sure looks as if we’re going to sell a lot of cars.” Lined up behind an outsized mock-up of a dashboard along with four other motormakers last week (see cut), Ford President Ford and G.M.’s Curtice had good reason to toot their horns. As they opened the first postwar National Automobile Show in Manhattan’s Coliseum, 8,000 potential customers lined up outside. In the first two days, 70,000 plunked down 90¢ apiece just to see the racy goods Detroit was ready to sell them.

In the industry’s most ambitious promotion in history, the big automakers had spread through three floors of the Coliseum an $11,250,000 display of 124 different new cars, 66 trucks and buses, plus scores of sequined nymphs to decorate them, and a half-hour musical review (title: America on the Move) that ran six times a day. Among the show stoppers: the high-priced cars that will go into limited production this year—Cadillac’s $12,500 Eldorado Brougham (output restricted to 1,000 the first year), Pontiac’s convertible Bonneville Special (only 2,000, and for dealer use only), Ford’s retractable hardtop convertible (about 10,000 in 1957).

How Many Cars? Automen last week were brimming with optimism that 1957 car sales will rank second only to the 7,400,000 of 1955. Predicted G.M.’s Curtice: “The industry in 1957 should produce and the domestic market absorb approximately 6,500,000 cars and 900,000 trucks. Including export, production should approximate 8,300,000 cars and trucks.” Curtice candidly admitted that a year ago he had been overoptimistic in anticipating a 6,500,000-car year for 1956. But this year, said he, “the supply of new cars in the hands of dealers on Jan. 1 will be low, whereas a year ago they were abnormally high.”

Demand for new cars was so brisk that there were already shortages of many models. Henry Ford said that his new Mercury “has stimulated unprecedented customer demand which cannot be met for some considerable period of time despite rapidly increasing rates of production.” As a result, Ford was upping its goal from 28% to 31.5% of the 1957 market.

Not Enough Cars. Chrysler’s Lester Lum (“Tex”) Colbert, embarrassed by his own shortage of cars (TIME, Dec. 10), said that “by all present indications, the retail market for cars in 1957 should be bigger by a substantial margin.” For one reason, buyers would be in a stronger position than in 1956, when many of them were paying off the autos they bought in the record year of 1955. Said Colbert: “A substantial percentage of those who purchased new cars in 1955 on the installment plan have already paid off these obligations, or will have them paid off some time during the next year.” He noted that 35% to 40% of 1955’s new-car buyers paid in cash, and that two out of every three persons who bought new cars in 1955 will have cleaned up their automobile debt by 1957.

Although signs pointed to a better year, automakers were cautiously steering away from 1955’s wild production race. In November and December of 1955, Detroit motormakers rushed out cars at a supercharged annual rate of almost 8,500,000. In November alone, they produced 749,003 cars, a yearly rate of 9,000,000.

But this November they trimmed output to 577,843, an annual rate of about 6,900,000, and were determined to hold to that level, with this month’s production slated to be 600,000. At least one of the Big Three, Chrysler, talked of “leveling out” production, aiming to produce a steady flow of cars throughout the year to increase efficiency, decrease layoffs avoid overstocking dealers.

*From left: Diamond T Motor Car Co. Vice Chairman E. J. Bush, Studebaker-Packard President Harold E. Churchill, G.M.’s Curtice, Ford’s Ford, Chrysler’s Colbert, American Motors President George Romney.