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Mr. Chrysler always looks a trifle amazed. He has a home on Long Island —at Great Neck. He owns and uses a yacht and several speed boats. His oriental rugs make one of the best collections in the U. S. When he wants something he gets it without ado. So he has a pipe organ at home. To save himself reading labor, he has a paper made up for his private use. It is an expensive clipping of magazine articles and economic reports.
Joint Assets of the two companies approximate $450,000,000. Assets of other motor companies:
General Motors. . $1,098,477, 575
Ford 742,056,110
Studebaker 135,877,946
Packard 61,518,952
Joint Production. Last year Chrysler sold 192,083 passenger cars; Dodge, 205,-260 passenger cars and Graham Bros, trucks. It was a poor year for Dodge: they were changing models; in 1926 they had made 331,764 vehicles. So the current estimate is reasonable — that jointly they will produce 600,000 to 700,000 cars.
General Motors last year made 1,554,557 cars and trucks, and is making more this year. Ford hopes for a 1,500,000 schedule. Next would rank Chrysler plus Dodge.
Caroms. Caroming off the news of this deal were more or less reasonable theories of other motor deals.
Spectacular was the despatch from Detroit which the New York Herald Tribune printed: "Another report current in the financial districts is that the present move is only part of a larger plan whereby, when the present deal is completed, Chrysler will enter the General Motors Corporation through an exchange of one share of General Motors common for two shares of Chrysler and that Walter P. Chrysler will become president of General Motors." That may be set down as improbable.
Jordan and Pierce-Arrow again were linked in gossip. Both recently have had deficits.
Mack Truck was handed to General Motors by one rumor. By another, Mack Truck and White Truck would join. Another sold Mack Truck to Studebaker.
Hupmobile was William Crapo Durant's. He owns, reputedly, a large block of Hupmobile shares. He controls, too, Durant Motors (Durant and Star cars), Locomobile Co. of America, and more than a year ago he formed Consolidated Motors, Inc. in Delaware, and advertised in 48 newspapers of 29 cities that "exactly as the Buick in 1908 was used as the nucleus and the Keystone of the great General Motors," he intended to use the new Star Six for his new company. Financial writers jeered at Mr. Durant as a stockjobber (TIME, April 18, 1927).
Reo's stock market strength was based largely on the story that Packard would absorb it. Packard was also supposed to be seeking Fierce-Arrow. And Auburn was tied to Gardner.
Stock market trades were based on beliefs that some combinations would attract Briggs Body, Murray Body, Eaton Axle, Stewart-Warner, Electric Auto Lite.
*Her grandfather, Benjamin Douglass, founded R. G. Dun & Co., business statisticians, credit raters. *His old friends of Hutchison, Kan., know him as a ready host and help when needed. Their children attend each other's weddings; the boys get jobs in Chrysler's factories—at Detroit, Dayton, Ohio, Newcastle, Ind. Mr. Chrysler has paid for an addition to the Kansas Wesleyan University at Salina, Kan. In one Kansas city he built five churches.