Word: chevrolet
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...snowy afternoon, in Flint, Mich, a little knot of men stood around a shiny black Chevrolet coupe in Assembly Plant Number Two. Someone had scrawled on its rear window in white crayon: last Chevrolet off Jan. 30, 1942. A reporter and a veteran Chevrolet workman climbed into the car. The reporter stepped on the starter, drove off the assembly line, turned the lights on & off, honked the horn. The strident little beep, echoing through the acres of suddenly silent machinery, signaled the end of an epoch in U.S. industrial history...
...grinned, joked, washed up and wandered outside to line up before the pay window. A passing workman gave the last Chevrolet an affectionate kick in the rear-as it might be a farmer slapping an old horse. They knew that a chapter in their lives was over. Some current of emotion-half-abashed, selfconscious, a sentiment that seemed a little ridiculous when dedicated to inanimate machinery-moved through the crowd, finding its outlet in the horseplay, the offhand talk, the what-the-hells with which American workmen cover up what they feel...
Tipoff: G.M. is going to war. Dick Grant was Productionman Bill Knudsen's opposite (sales) number at Chevrolet in the twenties, when G.M. revolutionized the motor industry by using sales forecasts to schedule production rather than vice versa. Such a man, while serving G.M.'s wartime interests, can also serve the U.S.'s by speeding up procedure. With orders like the $5 billions announced this week (see p. 61) pouring into Detroit, it will take a quick and skilful hand just to hold the funnel...
Before OPM last week, bike makers argued that the 40 lb. of steel in a bicycle could in many situations replace a 2,900-lb. Chevrolet. The British use bicycles mostly to go to work. Most U.S. bicycles (around 10,000,000) are owned for sport by boys and girls, but not all. As evidence of their usefulness, the manufacturers cited Philadelphia's bike-riding newsboys, who sold $103,000 worth of defense stamps one week, $130,000 worth in another...
William Batt's own SKF Industries controls the weather in its ball-bearing plants; Chevrolet has units in its machine-gun plant; Alabama's Rust Engineering has a 1,200-ton machine in its shell-loading plant...