AUTOS: Day of the Babies

Turin's Valentino Exhibition Palace was ablaze with chrome and bright-painted metal. On view at Italy's oldest and biggest auto show were the pride and joy of the world's automakers: 64 models from twelve nations, including General Motors' opulent Cadillac, Czechoslovakia's tanklike Tatra, Britain's 150-m.p.h. Aston Martin racer. But the stars of the show were not the big, the swift or the beautiful. They were the small, neatly styled economy cars that spark the biggest boom Europe's automakers have ever known. This year the industry will produce better than 4,500,000 small cars—and export something like 45% of them to eager...

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