Word: erwin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Four for Four. This week, with every gilded chassis and every cutaway transmission in place, G.M.'s President Charles Erwin Wilson and his four executive vice presidents would stand atop a marble staircase at the Waldorf to greet their guests and show their wares, on which they had spent a round $150 million for retooling. All of G.M.'s cars showed a drastic change either inside or out. They were so low and rakish that a small man could look over the top. They had wider seats (average front seat width: 62 inches), little change in wheelbases...
...Wheel. No one knew this better than G.M.'s five division bosses and the man who keeps them pulling together with the purring power of a V-8-President Charles Erwin Wilson. A $236,000-a-year captain of industry, "C.E.," as his friends call him, is a reserved, blue-eyed boss who thinks fast, talks slow and never wastes his time pounding the desk. Slightly jowly, with a pleasant smile, he has neither bombast nor bulk (he is 5 ft. 10 in., 175 lbs.). He talks with a mild Midwest twang, walks with a slight stoop...
Unlike his fireballing predecessor, the late William S. Knudsen, C.E. hates to make snap decisions, likes to sleep on the hard ones. He seldom relaxes. When he does, he likes to tell stories from his vast fund of them, though his wife Jessie sometimes protests: "Oh Erwin, not that one again!" One of his favorites is about two Englishwomen who were being chauffeur-driven around Detroit in a G.M. limousine. Someone touched a hydraulic window-lift button by mistake, and the glass partition dropped, letting in a blast of air that billowed up the guests' skirts. "Gracious!" cried...
...home, C.E. is up at 7 for a quick shower, breakfast and a chat with his wife. "It's about the only time I ever get to talk with Erwin," she says. When it comes to food, her husband is easily pleased; his favorites are chipped beef or salted peanuts, or both, any time of day. The Wilsons gave up most entertaining long ago; if C.E. showed up at functions at all, he was late, and loaded with work...
There was no hope for that until the buyer's market had brought something like prewar sales conditions. Charles Erwin Wilson did not look for it until the prices of late-model used cars were at least 25% under new car prices. That seemed some time off; despite the used-car slump, most G.M., Ford and Chrysler "new" used cars were still selling at over the list prices last week. Thus, most automakers thought that car prices would stay where they were for a long time. As for Wilson, who wanted prices to come down, too, he said...