Calling All Cars

Other automakers have tended to spar while under assault about the safety of their cars. But last week Henry Ford II came out swinging. Inspecting a new plant at Woodhaven, near Detroit, he went off the cuff from a prepared speech, accused industry critics of "harassment."

"Naturally," said Ford, "when 50,000 people a year are killed on the roads of the U.S., this is a bad situation. On the other hand, to blame it solely on the automobile is very unfair. We have always built safe cars, but that is not to say that we can't make them safer, and that is what we do every model year." In any discussion of safety, continued Ford, "the driver is the most important factor, because if you drive safely, accidents won't happen. Certainly the roads are an important part. The licensing of drivers is important, and we feel in our industry that vehicle inspection is very important."

His face red with anger, Ford tore into Lawyer Ralph Nader, author of Unsafe at Any Speed and the industry's most persistent critic. Said Ford: "Frankly, I don't think he knows very much about automobiles. He can read statistics and he can look up a lot of facts that are in the public domain, and he can write books, but I don't think he knows anything about engineering safety into automobiles."

Ford urged legislators to consider carefully "the economic impact upon our industry" of several auto-safety laws that have been proposed. "If they do something that is irrational," he warned, "they can upset the economy of this country very rapidly . . . All I hope is that these gentlemen in Washington will consider the problems that they may force on the automobile industry in depth before they pass a law . . . We are in trouble, but in fighting our way out of it, we are going to do the right thing for the consumer and we are going to make cars safer."

As Ford spoke, the safety furor continued on other fronts. General Motors admitted that the owners of 15,000 Buick Specials in the 1963 series sold with oversize tires might find that the tires can be scraped by the inside of the fender. And automakers continued to call back past products for new safety fixes. Items:

>Chrysler Corp. called back 17,500 of its 1966 Dodge Polaras and Monacos to fix a throttle linkage that can stretch during sharp braking, causing the engine to idle too fast. Chrysler said the fault had caused no accidents that it knew of but it was "concerned."

>General Motors asked its dealers to call in 16,000 of its 1965 Chevelles, Corvairs and Chevrolets because they had faulty front-door latches that might spring when the car is in an "unusual attitude"-- which could mean when it is going around a curve at high speed.

Almost as if satisfied that enough trouble had been stirred up in the domestic industry, Crusader Nader turned his attention to foreign cars. He told a Senate subcommittee: "It is hard to find a more dangerous car than the Volkswagen."

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