Word: compacter
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Powerful Stimulant. Signs of second-half improvement are already visible. Steel orders show promise of increasing (see below). Auto sales in mid-July hit the fastest clip in four years, with dealers selling an average of 17,485 U.S.-built cars daily. For the first six months, the new compacts accounted for 25.1% of the market. Last week General Motors was readying its new compact, one of a new group of scaled-down big cars that will hit the 1961 market. Its name: the Oldsmobile F-85, a smaller version of its big-car brother with a new eight-cylinder...
...auto industry turned out its millionth compact in 1960 two weeks ahead of schedule. To mark the occasion, American Motors President George Romney, the small-car apostle who forced Detroit into the compact market, finally laid to rest rumors that had buzzed around Wall Street for three years: that American Motors would merge with Chrysler Corp. Romney feared that the persistent reports were damaging American Motors' future as well as the price of its stock, which is now about 30% below its 1959 high. Said he: "They are not only completely untrue but unfair to everyone...
Romney sees no need to join with any other company, since he has a top management staff and such a low break-even point that he can make far more per compact than the Big Three, whose invasion of the market has not hurt him. Rambler sales have risen from 6.3% of total industry sales just before the advent of Falcon, Corvair and Valiant to 7.1% today -and are still climbing. Last week Rambler delivered its 300,000th unit for the 1960 model year, is running two months ahead of last year's record production and chalking up sales...
...compacts not only threaten tax revenues, said Mackie, but are also highway hazards. For example, he argued that compact and smaller car headlights are too close together, thus give other drivers trouble judging the distance from such approaching cars at night. The Michigan Good Roads Federation shares Mackie's concern, and Michigan State University's Highway Traffic Safety Center is studying traffic flow and safety questions involving the compacts...
American Motors was the first to snap back at Mackie. Said President Romney: "In the matter of compact-car safety, 400 major U.S. insurance companies do not agree with Mr. Mackie. They offer a 10% lower rate for compact cars. Such compact factors as relative power, headlight and seating arrangement, etc., do not differ significantly [from the big cars]. The big-size differential is in the elimination of extensive front and rear overhang, which reduce vision and decrease handling ease. As to long-range car use and tax revenue, the compacts have greatly stimulated the automobile business...