Traveling businessmen and vacationers have been the mainstays of the nation's 75,000-car, $370 million auto-rental business. Lately, rental by the "neighborhood" customer who needs another car when his own is being repaired or his son comes home from college has become an important factor.
To tap this market, which has grown from 1% of daily rentals in 1960 to 16% today, Ford Motor Co. last week drove into the rental field.
More than 500 of Ford's 6,500 dealers have signed agreements to lease a minimum of five cars from the company, rent them out. Dealers will set their own...