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Curtice has a Farleyesque memory for names, stores up facts and figures like a Univac computer. Says one associate: "You'd better not tell him something one day and something else another day, even if it's a year later. But if you're working like hell, he is quick to forgive mistakes." He talks out problems with associates, listens to every angle, then makes his decisions quickly and without worry. Says Curtice: "The best committee is the committee of one." But Curtice's greatest talent is his innate knowledge of what will tickle an auto buyer's fancy—and open up his pocketbook. Says G.M.'s Chief Designer Harley Earl: "Curtice is the best shopper we've ever had."
Hot-Rodder. Curtice has a hot-rodder's feeling for cars, likes to trick up his own cars with new gadgets and styling changes. While former President Charlie Wilson was content to travel around in a sedate Cadillac sedan, Red Curtice likes to dash around his home town of Flint in a sporty grey-blue Buick Skylark. (He had it fitted with a wrap-around windshield long before it came out on the production models.) For Vice President Earl, who has built up the greatest industrial designing organization in the world, Curtice is a one-man poll to test new ideas. The trick, says Curtice, is simply to find the proper balance between the new and the old. Says he; "We must 'create' used cars by bringing out new ones. But the new cars must not be too radical, or they will not sell. Automobile owners are among the most conservative people in the world."
On dozens of occasions, Curtice has displayed his knack for picking automotive winners. In 1940 he brought out the first two-tone car. In 1948, for a special investment bankers' show, Curtice ordered a Buick combining the all-weather protection of a coupe with the sporty look of a convertible. The car was the Buick Riviera, the nation's first mass-produced hardtop convertible, a style that proved so popular that it now accounts for 54% of Buick's sales.
A few years ago, a G.M. designer in his spare time tricked up his Buick with holes in the fender and flashing lights inside to create an impression of supercharged power. Curtice happened to see the car. Result: the next models were the three-holer and four-holer cars. When Harley Earl first showed Curtice the panoramic windshield on the experimental Sabre and Buick XP-3OO, Curtice's reaction was typical: "Boy, that's good. Let's put it into production." When G.M. engineers experimented with such devices as the foot parking brake and Dynaflow transmission, Curtice, the perfect customer, tried them and quickly ordered them on production models. One Curtice disappointment has been Chevrolet's glass-fiber Corvette, which he ordered Chevy to make to compete with foreign sports cars. He hoped to sell 1,000 a month, but production is down to only 300 a month because of slow sales. Probable reason: buyers cannot get the car without also buying $500 in extra equipment.