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Masked Marvels. Last week Wilson's team had more than 1949 models on their minds. Their stylists and engineers were already busy on 1950 and 1951 cars. At G.M.'s Milford, Mich, proving ground, nameless masked marvels were already being rolled over, driven up & down hills and through water holes to see if they were sturdy enough for future production.
Throughout its designing process, G.M. gets plenty of free advice from the public. A lot of it is solicited by the customer-research office, which asks motorists what they like and don't like. It is a dull day for hulking Vice President Harley Earl, the corporation's stylist, when someone doesn't tell him he made the body too wide, or the fender pants too long.
Right now customer research is mulling public complaints that postwar cars are too long to get in garages, too low to see over the hood, too vulnerable amidships for safe parking and too costly to fix when they get smashed up. Some other customer suggestions: "A sun visor for the man in the middle . . ." "A sliding tray for lunching in the car . . ." "An automatic jack under each corner of the car . . ."
The Road Ahead. Some of the things the public wants it gets, but not always as soon as it wants them. Front seats have been widened because Americans insist on riding three in front. The main reason for the power built into U.S. cars is that motorists want plenty of pep and lots of speed and don't care about the gas bills.
On their drawing boards and in their research labs, G.M. and other manufacturers have everything from pancake engines to rear-engine cars and plastic bodies. The companies have not closed the door to any development. However, Chrysler's Airflow, similar to present cars but a flop in 1934, taught them that it is unsafe to get too far ahead of the public.
The industry is also toying with small cars (under $1,000), which 60% of U.S. buyers, according to a recent survey, would like. G.M. had plans for such a car two years ago and shelved them because of the steel shortage. Still, Wilson is not at all sure the small car is the answer. "The trouble with making a car two-thirds the size of Ford, Chevrolet or Plymouth," he says, "is that you take out value faster than you can take out cost. And if we could sell only 50,000 a year, a small car would cost more than a Chevrolet." In the broader economic view, he thinks it is probably better to produce enough new cars to knock down the used-car market to its proper level. Then the cheap car would be, as it was prewar, a good used car.
The next big automotive development may be a less exciting, evolutionary one: a perfected automatic transmission in the low-priced field. Whether, in the case of Chevrolet, it will be Hydra-Matic or Dynaflow, G.M. isn't saying. (A transmission engineer who has worked on both favors Dynaflow because it is "the first real step toward a fully automatic drive.")
The prospective customer in 1949 was interested in automatic transmissions, plastic bodies and rear engines. But what he really wanted to know was: When will prices come down?