Mr. Sloan

"My generation had an opportunity unique in the history of American industry," wrote Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. two years ago in his memoirs. Of all men of any generation, few have made more of their opportunities than he did.

As president of General Motors Corp. from 1923 to 1937, as board chairman until 1956 and as G.M.'s still active honorary chairman until the day of his death, at 90, last week, Sloan was a towering figure of U.S. industry. Under him, G.M. grew from a frail follower of Ford into the world's largest and most profitable corporation. As much as any other individual, Sloan shaped the auto industry, which itself reshaped the entire U.S. economy and, in Sloan's words, changed "the pace and style of everyday life in America."

Selling Ideas. Sloan was a man of almost cadaverous appearance (6 ft., 130 Ibs.) and unfailing courtesy. "I never give orders," he once said. "I sell my ideas to my associates if I can." He generally could, and many of his ideas still stand as guiding principles for G.M. In the auto industry's infancy, Henry Ford produced economical, unchanging, sober-styled Model Ts for a mass market. It was Sloan who first sensed that Americans wanted something more than mere wheels and a combustion engine. "Mr. Ford," he later recalled, "failed to realize that it was necessary for new cars to do more than meet the need for basic transportation. Middle-income buyers created the demand for progress in new cars, for comfort, convenience, power and style. This was the actual trend of American life, and those who adapted to it prospered."

Under Sloan's pioneering presidency, G.M. emphasized the closed body instead of the open touring car, pushed used-car trade-ins, installment buying, annual model changes, and built a six-car price range from Chevrolet to Cadillac that encouraged buyers to trade up. Sloan had definite ideas about styling, and he did not always like what he saw, even at G.M. In 1957 he was particularly distressed at one industry trend. "They're not making cars any more," he complained. "They're making fins."

"He Should Be President." Sloan originally came to G.M. through a rear door. He was born in New Haven, Conn., and early in life showed a natural mechanical ability. He earned an engineering degree from M.I.T. in a whirlwind three years, then went to work for the near-bankrupt Hyatt Roller Bearing Co. of Harrison, N.J. Convinced that Hyatt had possibilities, Sloan persuaded his father, a well-to-do wholesale grocer and tea importer, to buy a controlling interest in Hyatt--and let Junior run the company. Within six months, Hyatt began to show profits. Within 17 years, profits had mounted to $4,000,000 a year--mostly because Sloan had persuaded Detroit's fledgling automakers that they ought to substitute bearings for the wagon grease they had been using to lubricate axles and transmissions.

The best of all Sloan's bearing customers was William Crapo Durant, who was trying to assemble a motley collection of auto companies into a corporation he called General Motors. Durant was also tying his suppliers together as United Motors Corp., bought Hyatt for $13.5 million as part of United. Durant had taken such a fancy to Sloan that he hired him to become United's president. United was eventually merged into General Motors and Durant was ousted by the Du Pont family, already large G.M. stockholders. New President Pierre S. Du Pont asked Sloan to stay as operations vice president; he had undoubtedly been influenced by Du Pont Director John J. Raskob. "There," said Raskob about Sloan, "is a man who should be President of the United States. He never will, because he is not colorful enough."

When Pierre Du Pont retired from G.M.'s presidency, Sloan was his natural successor. He took over a sprawling infant that made five nonintegrated car lines, ran such supply companies as Fisher Body and United Motors with little thought of inventory control, cached its cash wherever division man agers wanted to keep it. Sloan set up a seemingly contradictory system: a committee management in which operations were decentralized, finances and policy centralized. Above it all was "Mr. Sloan," as he was always called.

Golden Rule. When Sloan became president, the company had 12% of the U.S. auto market; when he stepped out as chairman, it had 52%. G.M. never skipped a dividend--Sloan's golden rule was that profits were worth nothing if they were not passed on to shareholders. At the time of his death, he was the largest shareholder, with more than 690,000 shares.

Sloan's management extended far beyond New York and Detroit. He spent much time on the road, traveled in a private railroad car to call on G.M. dealers large and small, seeking out their advice and complaints--and in the process, building the auto industry's strongest dealer network. He also moved G.M. overseas, buying such subsidiaries as Britain's Vauxhall and Germany's Opel, and he diversified General Motors into the manufacture of nonauto products ranging from refrigerators to diesel locomotives.

Work Hard. For all his prestige and power, Sloan never really became a personage to the public. "Mr. Sloan is coming out with a new car with an Indian name--Pontiac," cracked Will Rogers. "Mr. Ford and Mr. Chrysler have automobiles named after them. All Mr. Sloan has is a liniment."

Mr. Sloan preferred it that way. Though he was friend and adviser to U.S. Presidents, he treated them with the same cool courtesy that he showed toward used-car dealers. He carefully answered all letters that came to him, but, whether to a close friend or perfect stranger, he always signed himself as "Alfred P. Sloan." In his autobiography, My Years with General Motors, which started as a series of articles in FORTUNE and became a book that sold 50,000 copies, he passed on to would-be tycoons his secrets of success. "Keep an open mind," he wrote, "and work hard. The last is most important of all. There is no short cut."

No Golf, No Fishing. Throughout his long lifetime, Alfred Sloan was certainly the exemplar of his own advice. His total dedication was to General Motors. He never smoked, seldom drank, disliked partygoing, scoffed at golf and fishing as wastes of time, rarely read anything other than corporate reports. He and his wife, Irene Jackson Sloan, had no children, lived quietly in their apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. The Sloans gave to charities with magnificent openhandedness; their philanthropy over the years has been estimated at more than $300 million, including $18 million to M.I.T. and $31 million to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, where Sloan died.

To his last day, General Motors remained Sloan's primary interest. As its honorary chairman, he scrupulously attended all board meetings. Troubled by deafness in his later years, he took to conducting conversations by note writing. Not long ago, a journalist scribbled out a question: What is the U.S. stock with the most promising growth prospect? Without hesitation, Sloan answered: "General Motors."

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