Word: motoring
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...profits of Midas-International Corp. have suddenly taken off on a heady flight. Last December Midas, which franchises independent muffler installers, opened in Phoenix its 900th muffler shop. The company has also been diversifying to become a force in the burgeoning market for recreational vehicles-campers, trailers and motor homes. Last year Midas reported $225 million in sales, a 39% increase, to its corporate parent, IC Industries, Inc., the company that owns the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad. Midas' earnings are not reported separately, but analysts guess they may be about $23 million annually, pretax. Midas President Ralph Weiger...
...vehicle sales a heavy blow, but Weiger took advantage of the downturn to mass-purchase chassis and their components. When the shortage passed, Weiger opened a 130,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing and assembly operation in Elkhart, Ind. He promoted the star of Midas' 30-model trailer, camper and motor-home lineup: the Midas mini-motor home, known as a Chopped Van. Midas buys the cab and chassis of a GM, Ford or Dodge van, then builds on an insulated aluminum and wood body complete with tub, shower, refrigerator, stove, beds and other amenities. Selling price: $12,000. Midas...
...skepticism, in its present maturity, turns out to be essentially political in its aspirations. Its successes include the very existence of the Environmental Protection Agency and, as a particular example, the EPA'S recent action obliging the Ford Motor Co. to recall 54,000 cars to make sure that they meet emission standards. Skepticism can be credited with last year's California referendum on nuclear power; the fact that the voters did not veto nuclear expansion misses the point, which is that an arcane subject hitherto considered the sole province of the scientist and engineer was submitted...
...backgammon, books and endless variations of electronic games should soar. The station wagon, the Patton tank of suburbia, may be replaced by smaller cars. The automakers expect to sell more of the handy vans that are already a part of the youth culture as well as more recreational vehicles: motor homes, campers, dune buggies, Jeeps, motorcycles and mopeds. Education may finally get better, as the teacher-student ratio improves. Says Economist Alan Sweezy of the California Institute of Technology: "I think ZPG is going to be a very good thing for higher education...
...dance. Ensemble produces a whole greater than the dancers through which the performers as individuals emerge. If music is, as Henri Bergson implies, our intuition of inner time made concrete, then dance makes concrete our sense of inner aliveness, the sensation of blood through our veins, of that inner motor that keeps us living. Laura Dean creates dances as metaphors for being totally and completely alive...