Word: spartanism
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Speed to Spare. After its convincing victory over Michigan last week, rugged Michigan State is an early favorite to capture its first Big Ten championship in eight years. Passing had been the only questionable factor in the Spartan attack. Against Michigan, Quarterback Smith showed that he is a poised passer as well as a brilliant ball handler, and Michigan State had speed to spare in sophomore Halfbacks Dewey Lincoln and Sherman Lewis. The Spartans' traditionally tenacious "umbrella" defense has not given up a single touchdown in three games. But cautious Coach Duffy Daugherty is not yet counting...
...Spartan Dedication. The Mark X's creator is Sir William Lyons, 60, Jaguar's steel-willed chairman and managing director, who had a very special plan in mind. "We wanted," he explains, "to introduce the characteristics of a racing car into a passenger car." The racing car was Jaguar's famed, sleek-snouted Type D, which burned up Europe's tracks in the mid-'50s and won the grueling Le Mans 24-hour race three years in a row. From the Type D Sir William took road-clinging, independent rear-wheel suspension...
...does Jaguar do it? The answer lies largely in Sir William's Spartan-like dedication to no frills and no featherbedding. Jaguar's ugly red-brick plant in Coventry is starkly functional: Sir William's own bare office is ornamented by a single ceramic jaguar. Working nine to twelve hours a day, he doubles unofficially as his own chief inspector, and expects each of his executives to fill at least two posts. The result: Jaguar has probably the lowest ratio of office to production workers of any major British automaker...
...stint of selling cut-rate Dutch washing machines door to door gave Bloom the idea of marketing his own Dutch washers. After many Dutch farms refused to manufacture for him, he finally made a deal with a plant in Utrecht and formed his own company. Then he advertised a Spartan automatic washer-dryer for $144 -40% below competitors' prices. Bloom's first ad pulled 8,000 inquiries, and soon he was selling 500 machines a week. Hoping to cut overhead by opening production lines in Britain, he next made a novel deal with Rolls Razor...
Going for Willis is a politically clean school board, which is free to write its own budget without sabotage by the city council. Also going for him is his own Spartan selfdiscipline, which often keeps him working until 3 a.m. His speeches run to clichés; his critics label his community relations as "deplorable." But School Superintendent Willis makes good on his promises, and what he promises is to produce "more buildings, more classrooms, more attention to adult and vocational education, to the highly motivated and the handicapped-more of everything that's good...