INSTALLMENT BUYERS are giving the bill collectors a tough time, especially in areas hit by defense layoffs. More than 40% of the lenders who report to American Bankers Association complain that credit delinquencies are rising, and better than 30% of the reporting areas are experiencing an unusual increase in automobile repossessions.

RATE-BOOST CAMPAIGNS by airlines are winning more support in CAB, which turned down lines-urgent pleas for 6% raise last summer. CAB voted to allow Continental Air Lines, which was not a party to last summer's request, to raise fares by 7% to 10% on some Western short hops.

KENT SALES BOOM is puffing up P. Lorillard Co. earnings so fast that Wall Streeters guess earnings may be as high as $2 a share this quarter v. 42-c- in fourth quarter of 1956 and $1.02 in this year's third quarter.

PEN SALES SLUMP, because of price war among the ballpoints, is causing Eversharp Inc. to sell its pen and pencil divisions, concentrate on safer safety razors and blades. Ever-sharp board has approved sale to Parker Pen Co., and Parker will probably agree, as it is eager to add Eversharp's foreign business to its own burgeoning overseas operation.

TEXAN SID RICHARDSON is spreading word that for right price he will sell his oil and gas holdings, estimated to be worth upwards of $200 million. Richardson, 67, who likes to say that a man's wealth can be measured by what he owes, and who just borrowed $37.5 million, is discouraged by the softening domestic oil market, the increasingly tough and costly job of exploring and drilling. Among interested prospects: Continental Oil, Humble Oil and Standard Oil (Ind.).

$86 MILLION ORDER from Navy will help Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. out of cutback woes. The Long Island company is getting a $46 million contract to produce propeller-driven, all-weather, radar-equipped WF-2 Tracer early-warning planes and a $40 million production contract for transonic, needle-nosed F9F-8T jet fighter-trainers.

NEW U.S. LUXURY LINER, biggest to be launched in past five years, will have a unique attraction: a solarium atop a dummy smokestack, 100 ft. above the water line, where passengers can sunbathe in the raw (a partition will divide the sexes). Moore-McCormack Lines' 553-passenger, 22,770-ton S.S. Brasil built by Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp. at Pascagoula, Miss., will go into service between the U.S. and South America next summer.

SLIDING-SCALE INSURANCE, on which the premium payments go down as the size of the policy goes up, is proving a fast success. Milwaukee's Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. pioneered the idea early in 1957, did so well that it will extend sliding scale to all existing policies of $5,000 or more.

FAST-MOVING VOLKSWAGEN, which accounted for more than $75 million of the $175 million foreign-car sales in U.S. last year, now faces Government roadblock. In antitrust suit, Justice Department charged that major U.S. distributor, Volkswagen of America, fixed wholesale and retail prices, eliminated competition among its own 14 distributors and 350 dealers by giving them exclusive sales territories, forced dealers to sell only to buyers living in their sales areas.

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