Word: knudsens
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Divorced. John Knudsen ("Jack") Northrop, 53, aircraft builder (the Black Widow, the Fly ing-Wing): by Inez Harmer Northrop, fiftyish; after 31 years of marriage, three children; in Pasadena, Calif...
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...
...auto industry because "it's a dramatic business, you know." After World War I, he joined Remy Electric Co., a General Motors subsidiary, as chief engineer and sales manager. In nine years he was a G.M. vice president; five years after that he became Bill Knudsen's right-hand man. In 1940, when F.D.R. tapped Knudsen to direct defense production, Vice President Wilson stepped easily into the great Dane's shoes. Since then he has had two big projects: 1) mobilize G.M. for war (tanks, planes, jet engines, etc.), and 2) reconvert it for peace...
...dealer organization, brought out low, medium and high-priced Buicks that could compete in almost any price range. By 1941, when Buick turned out 316,251 cars, they had pushed from eighth place to fourth, crowding out Dodge, Pontiac and Oldsmobile along the way. Once when the late Bill Knudsen saw one of Curtice's sales forecasts, he muttered: "Well, by Got, you can't shoot the moon unless you see it first, you know." Curtice not only made Buick one of G.M.'s most profitable divisions but kept its engineers hopping. (Buick's Dynaflow automatic...
Died. William S. (Signius Wilhelm Poul) Knudsen, 69, plain-spoken mass production genius, who left the General Motors presidency in 1940 to direct the U.S. armament program; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Detroit. Danish-born "Big Bill" Knudsen arrived in the U.S. with $30 in 1899, went to work in a shipyard, got a job in 1911 with Henry Ford and became his right-hand man. After a policy row in 1921, he went over to G.M. and soon made Chevrolet the competitor that killed the Model...