Word: costa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Buyers are adding many expensive options that can almost double the price of a $2,200 subcompact. The extras include "deluxe" gas caps, fake woodgrain treatments for station wagons, air conditioning and more powerful (and gas-thirsty) engines. For $300, Custom-glass, Inc., of Costa Mesa, Calif., will even convert a Ford Pinto into a "Mini Mark IV" Continental by revamping its rear end and giving it a nose bob. Why go to all that bother to doll up a compact with all the frills? Detroit's backseat psychologists have this explanation: the U.S. consumer figures that buying...
...into a modern cruiser by a succession of naval architects. "Colin Archers," as the boats are still called, have circled the globe. Suhaili, Eric, Thistle-their names are familiar in far ports. The latest incarnation, the West-sail 32, is a roomy, teak and fiber-glass version built in Costa Mesa, Calif., by a young refugee from electrical engineering named Snider Vick. With his small production line and a fierce de votion to quality, Vick is determined to give fits to competitors whom he calls "the plastic pop-out people"-the mass producers of lightly built fiber-glass boats...
What bothers many Costa Ricans most is that Vesco seems to have invested in their popular President as well as their economy. Diminutive (5 ft. 3 in.) José Figueres, 66, known affectionately as "Don Pepe," is something of a national hero. In 1948, he successfully led a ragtag 700-man force against Communist revolutionaries and military reactionaries who were trying to destroy Costa Rica's democratic system. Don Pepe, who was elected to his second nonconsecutive presidential term in 1970, concedes that some of his business investments have gone sour in recent years. He readily acknowledges that...
...American financier paid more than $2,000,000 for 30% of the holding company. With the money Don Pepe bought new machinery that has increased the firm's output of coffee bags from 2,000,000 annually to 7,000,000. Since Vesco moved to Costa Rica, it turned out, Figueres' New York bank account has grown by $436,000-much of it transferred by a bank with which Vesco has had extensive dealings...
...news of Vesco's troubles-and of Don Pepe's relationship with the financier-spread through San José, the President went on the defensive. Don Pepe insisted that his relationship with Vesco had been strictly business. As long as the American breaks no Costa Rican law, Figueres sees no reason not to deal with him. He also explained, on a national-television broadcast, that the money deposited in his New York bank account was for such projects as support for the Costa Rican National Symphony Orchestra and a bank that helps artisans and small industries...