NEW MODEL AT G.M.

Fred Donner, the new boss of General Motors, has seldom spoken for publication in his 32 years at G.M., has operated as a financial expert as quietly as he lived--in a modest, middle-class home in Port Washington, Long Island, the type he could buy with about four weeks' salary. Last week, in the first interview since he was named G.M. chairman, Donner spelled out his ideas to TIME Correspondent George Bookman with thin-lipped determination to let people know that he is far more than a mere book balancer, hopes to prove that he is as forceful a personality as his predecessor, Supersalesman Harlow Curtice.

AT the outset, Donner aimed to set me straight on what he considers wrong impressions spread about him in news articles since he was promoted to chairman: "I am not taciturn, I am not shy. I am not afraid of people, and I don't even own a slide rule. People build up an image of a financial man that has no relation to reality. It will take a little time to get across the true picture."

He pulls no punches in defending the auto industry against some current criticisms. What about suggestions in Washington that G.M. should limit itself to a certain share of the auto market--say, less than 50%? He bristled: "Nothing sets me off so much as the suggestions that we ought to tell our people that there are limits on the effort they should make. Nothing could pull a corporation down faster. I have never seen us with a percentage of the industry that we could not be proud of."

One charge that also makes him particularly angry is that the recession was brought on by overexpanded credit selling of cars in 1955. "I think there was a coinciding then of two factors," he said. "The economic boom coincided with a freshness and newness of car models not seen for a long time. You had the panorama windshield and other improvements. The dealers got excited about the product. In their excitement they may have overtraded. But the fundamental fact was the business excitement."

Does G.M. feel a responsibility not to compete so hard as to drive marginal producers out of the business? Snapped Donner: "And when did you stop beating your wife? If you are thinking of Studebaker-Packard, we didn't drive them to their present con dition. They drove themselves there. Did you ever stop to wonder what they did with the profits of the lush war years, if they reinvested them in the business?"

Is the average American's attitude toward cars changing, with more interest in low-cost transportation than in the appearance of the car? Such theories, said Donner, "were just rationalizations for not 'buying a car. Lots of this sort of attitude would change overnight if economic conditions change, especially if we have a fresh new product--and speaking for G.M., we are going to have a fresh new product."

Donner admits he does not fully understand the reasons for the small-car vogue, but he is in no rush to order basic changes in G.M.'s product line. "I don't know for sure what it^ means, but I can tell you this--before we move at G.M., we will be sure. What would you do if you were Chevrolet and had the responsibility for selling a million and a half cars a year?

"A car is a whole series of engineering compromises. To get economy you have to sacrifice something else. The economy cars we have examined usually have low weight and low performance. You can't have everything. The successful manufacturer is the one who makes the best guess not on what the people say they want, but on what they want and are willing to buy.

"Take the argument over chrome. People said they didn't want chrome. But in a good year we loaded the cars with chrome, and they sold extremely well. In many of these areas it is as much an art as a science to design a product that will sell. The successful corporation is the one that masters the art as well as the science."

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