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What caused the Big Three to make up their minds was the take-off of Rambler sales in 1958. Belatedly, Detroit's Big Three (and little Studebaker-Packard) saw that there was a big market for the kind of car they themselves could make in the U.S. Dubbed a "compact" car to distinguish it from the tiny imports, the Rambler had offered the economy and easy handling of the foreign car plus much of the comfort, power and durability of the U.S. big car.
The Big Three quizzed Rambler buyers, discovered that economy of operation was twice as important in their choice as initial price, that the Rambler was bought no oftener as a second car (one in three sales) than Big Three low-priced cars. George Romney became a prophet with honor in his own country. In 1955 he had predicted: "By 1960, the compact car will be a top contender with present-type cars for the bulk of the market."
No Kissing. From his birth, Romney had little choice but to become a missionary of one kind or another. The grandson of a Mormon who sired 30 children by four wives, he was born into a monogamous family in Colonia Dublan, Mexico, where Mormons from the Southwest had settled 20 years earlier. When George was five, Pancho Villa drove the U.S.-born Mormons out of Mexico, and the family went to Los Angeles. In kindergarten, children taunted him mercilessly with the sneering cry "Mexican!" Said George one day: "Look, if a kitten was born in a garage, would that make it an automobile?'' The logic was overpowering; the kids let him alone.
George's father went broke five times, ended up as a builder in Salt Lake City. From the age of twelve, George worked to help support the family, still found time in high school to play football, basketball and baseball. There he met one of the few people ever to make him speechless: a stunning brunette named Lenore Lafount. Even for parents used to the mysterious fixations of adolescence, George was a caution. He decided that Lenore was the girl he was going to marry; just as he later could not understand why people hesitated to buy Ramblers, he could not understand why she did not jump at his offer.
He was so smitten that he followed Lenore whenever she went out with another boy, sat behind them in a movie or trailed their car. When she starred in a high-school play that involved kissing a boy, he insisted that there be no kiss at rehearsals, stuck around to make sure. "Sometimes I wondered if he was right for me," says Lenore, "but gradually I understood. He really cared."
Biggest Selling Job. At 19 he was selected by his church to spend two years as a Mormon missionary, took off for Great Britain. He spent 18 months in Scotland preaching the Mormon gospel from door to door, then went to London to preach for six more months from a soapbox in Hyde Park and at Tower Hill. The competition from other soapboxers for listeners was so tough that Romney teamed up with a red-bearded Socialist to catch an audience. They agreed to heckle each other's meetings regularly, thus both drew crowds. Says Romney: "I suppose some people thought I was eccentric. But I found it an illuminating, uplifting experience."