Challenge from G.M.

In the grand ballroom of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria this week, a multimillion-dollar show heralded the biggest auto news of the year: General Motors' 1954 line of cars. To retool for the 25 new production models and build eleven experimental cars, G.M. spent $350 million.

The corporation, which sold 3,500.000 cars and trucks last year (for 45.6% of the market), is out for an even bigger share in 1954. Said President Harlow H.

(for Herbert) Curtice: "No depression is in my vision, [though] competition in 1954 will be strong. Consumer expenditures should continue at substantially the present high levels." To meet--and provide--the competition he was talking about, said Curtice, G.M. plans to spend $1 billion on expansion.

Something for Everyone. Looking at G.M.'s Motorama, U.S. car buyers could understand "Red" Curtice's optimism.

Prices were little changed, but only Chevrolet and Pontiac looked much like the 1953 models, and even Pontiac brought out a new series, the Star Chief, to give car buyers a sporty-looking car at slightly higher prices ($100 more) than 1953 models. Buick was new from wheels to wrap-around windshield (TIME. Jan. 11) and so were the Cadillac and Oldsmobile: P: Oldsmobile is two inches longer and three inches lower. The lines are long and sweeping, with a massive grill, recessed front doors and a wrap-around windshield.

Horsepower has been boosted to 170 (from 150) in the Olds 88, and to 185 in the Super 88 and the de luxe 98 model.

The flashy Starfire convertible, a new car that takes its name and much of its styling from Oldsmobile's experimental car last year, will list at $2,962 at the factory.

P:Cadillac has used its 1953 Le Mans experimental car as the model for the 1954 line. The Cadillac has a new sweep, with a wrap-around windshield, larger tail fins, and jutting, jetlike exhaust pipes. There is a new suspension system, a more powerful engine (up to 230 h.p. from 210), cowl-type air vents instead of standard air intakes (which often sucked in the exhaust from cars ahead). As on most G.M. cars, prices are little changed, except for Cadillac's Eldorado convertible, cut $2,000, to $5,700 f.o.b. Detroit.

Most of the experimental cars of tomorrow (see NEWS IN PICTURES, pp. 100-1) are made of Fiberglas. There are two from each of the five G.M. divisions, plus the Firebird, a gas turbine car (TIME, Jan. 18). G.M.'s experimental jobs may never see the inside of a family garage, but many of the design ideas will find their way into future G.M. products, just as the wrap-around windshields, cut-down doors, low, sweeping bodies of 1954's models were all features originally worked out on earlier experimental cars.

Muscle for Buick. Credit for the new cars goes to President Curtice and Design Boss Harley Earl. At 60, Curtice is probably the best auto salesman in the world, though he never personally sold a car in his life. He believes that style, plus power and the razzle-dazzle send-off of the Motorama, is the way to sell cars. When Curtice became Buick boss in 1933, Buick was making only 40,621 cars a year, and buyers turned up their noses at the design.

Curtice jacked up the designers and salesmen, brought out Buicks priced to compete all along the line. Within five years, Buick was in fourth place in the industry, muscling out Dodge, Pontiac and Oldsmobile along the way.

Since then, Harlow Curtice has never slowed his pace. Up at 6 a.m. every morning, in his suite in the G.M. building in Detroit, he spends upwards of 14 hours a workday on the job, usually sees his family in Flint, his hometown, only on weekends. Though head of the world's biggest manufacturing corporation (1953 sales: an estimated $11 billion), he is not above taking a complaint about service personally over the phone from a G.M. car owner, and doing something about it. Design is his hobby, and the new cars incorporate some of the features on the experimental car Curtice drove last year.

This year Curtice plans to make a total of more than 3,000.000 cars and trucks.

And his divisions are planning record years. Buick wants to bump Plymouth out of third place in the industry (while Ford wants to bump Chewy out of first).

Oldsmobile has set its sights on 400,000 cars, 80,500 more than last year. Cadillac has a 93,000-car backlog to fill, is aiming at 117,000 cars and 50% of the luxury-car market.

Curtice thinks they can do it. He expects the industry to build--and sell--6,300,000 cars and trucks in the U.S. this year v. 7,000,000 last year, the most optimistic estimate in the industry. G.M.'s new $1 billion expansion program, which is in addition to the $2 billion already spent since war's end, will give Chevrolet a new spring-and-bumper plant and another small-parts factory in Flint, Mich.

Fisher Body will get three stamping plants in Grand Rapids, and new stamping plants in Pittsburgh. Hamilton. Ohio and-Cleveland. Says Curtice: "This program is a measure of faith in our country."

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