Cars to Drive

Passenger-car production quotas for individual automakers were set officially last week by the War Production Board. They totted up, not to 200,000 cars, as promised, but to over 240,000 cars for the last six months of this year. They also provided approximately double that number for the first three months of 1946.

In short, beginning Jan. 1, the production rate will quadruple. If production continues at that level, 1946 will approach 2,000,000 cars.

The aggregate quotas, by companies, to the end of next March:

General Motors 285,288

Chrysler 148,905

Ford 119,730

Studebaker 27,825

Hudson 21,602

Packard 20,118

Nash 19,550

Willys 16,000

Graham 16,000

Crosley 16,000

To give smaller companies enough output for economic production, no firm's quota was made smaller than 8,000 cars for the last half of 1945 or the first quarter of 1946. Otherwise quotas were proportioned to each firm's prewar output.

Some of the motormakers were not happy with these quotas. Ford, for one, complained that its quota this fall would provide only four cars for each of its dealers, whereas the fewer dealers of some smaller companies would have many more. This kind of quota trouble should not affect many businesses. WPB plans to free members of most industries to turn out as much as they want on a catch-as-catch-can basis. This will not be possible with autos, because the industry is so greedy for steel that other industries would be crowded out. Nor will it be possible with the construction industry, which is equally greedy with lumber.

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