Evening Star Newspaper, October 31, 1937, Page 83

Auto Show Section [] g gunflay %iaf m . PAGE G-—1 —— SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 31, 1937. Part 6—14 Pages WASHINGTON, D. C, WASHINGTON ’EA"GER TO VIEW 1938 MOTOR CAR PRODUCTS SUCCESSFUL SEASON FEEBREE : 938 ANALYSIS REVEALS 1938 AUTO ISHEADED TOWARD NEW ERA Automatic Shifting, Air Condi- SEEN AS EXHIBITION OF NEW CARS OPENS Show Held in Larger Quarters This Year and Many New Features Are Seen. By G. ADAMS HOWARD. IRED by successful accomplishments of the past and rekindled with optimistic predictions for the future America's began its new calendar year as t. I in which the 18th annual autoi open to an eagerly awaiting public. There at 1242 Twenty-fourth street N'W., Just a block above the Weather Bureau, more than 20 makes of cars were on display as well as many accessories and kindred equipment. The exhibit, staged under the aus- pices of the Washington Automotive Trade-Association, headed by its presi- dent, Oscar Coolican, and manager, Richard J. Murphy, will remain open through next Saturday night. The hours for admission today will be from 2 pm. until 11 pm. Tomorrow and thereafter the hours will be from 11 am. until 11 pm. The accessibility of the hall is probably better this year than last. Take any Georgetown street car or bus. Get off at Twenty- fourth street and Pennsylvania avenue. ‘Walk one block north on Twenty- fourth to L street. Then go one block further north to M street. One-half a block still further north is the location of the show. Besides the array of the brilliantly colored and shining cars of 1938 there are other interests at the show. The decoration is the motif of an Egyptian garden. Careful artistic touches have been given to make its affect most pleasing. Music also will furnish an acded charm. The new location affords much more space than before, per= mitting a better arrangement of the cars which gives the visitors easier and less crowded inspection. Auto officials here are confident of the coming year as another successful one for their industry. To begin with the United States has a motor vehicle ownership of more than 26,000,000. The National Capital has a high per- centage in relation to other cities. This year registrations in Washington were about 200,000, approximately a 6 per cent gain over last year. The automobile business here is second only to the purchase of food. Replacement Is Large. The replacement field in Washington is large. Washingtonians:due to the stability of wages and employment are able to buy and do buy. Now is held to be the best buying time. A few years ago the automobile shows were held in January and March and it purchasing caused by the shows is greater at this time, The change in automobile show time was made at the request of President Roosevelt who stated that he believed that a greater regularity | of employment would result, especially during the cold weather when workers needed constant employment to ob- tain salaries to enable them to pay that extra amount for fuel to keep them warm. When the shows were held in January and February there was a cessation of production for a long period before and many men were out of work. Now production eontinues throughout that period. Success in improving the stability of employment and higher annual earnings of auto factory workers, by virtue of the fall announcement of new passenger models, is confirmed by an announcement from the Auto- mobile Manufacturers’ Association. “Prior to 1935, it was customary to initiate the new models with the New York show, held early in Janu- ary,” . comments Alfred Reeves, vice president. “At that time, a study made by industry indicated that fac- tory employment could be greatly | stabilized and the annual earnings | of the individual factory workers in- creased by advancing the introduc- tion of the new models to October or November, furnishing full-time work during the Jate fall and winter months in automobile factories and related industries. Following this pro- gram, the shows were held in early November of 1835 and 1936, and the factory employment was sustained during the fall and winter months of those years.” Gains in Employment. Reports recently made to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics show that these gains in employment during the holiday season of 1836, resulting from the early introduction of the new models, provided work for 120,000 more men than otherwise would have been employed in the sutomobile and body manufacturing industry alone. It is estimated that 55,000 workers in allied and dependent industries owe their fall and winter employment to this new program, making an additional holiday season employment of 175,000 factory work- ers. Every third family of the 30,000,- 000 in the United States will pur- chase an automobile, new or used, some time during 1937, predicts the American Petroleum Industries Com- mittee. Sales of new cars are ex- pected to stand at about 4,300,000, and sales of used cars, which for the last 10 years have been greatly in excess of new cars, are expected to exceed 7,000,000, making a total of approximately 11,500,000 automobile sales transactions for the year. In 1936 a total of 10,606,000 automobiles was sold in the United States. Of these. 4,016,000 were new cars, and 6,500,000 were used automobiles. Automobile registrations are ex- pected to increase about 2,000,000 this year and that expansion of automobile ownership, the committee points out, will be chiefly among families having incomes of $30 a week or less. This expansion in ownership, plus greater annual use of automobiles already on the highways, will cause a- gain of about $100,000.000 in gasoline tax re- ,ceipts by the State and Federal gov- ernments. Registration fee receipts by the States will increase by about $25,000,000. Excise taxes on new cars is believed that the stimulus for | reat industry yesterday he doors of the Automotive Exhibit Hall mobile show is being held were thrown e = b will also yield the Federal Government another $60,000,000. According to these figures, it is seen that by 1940 close to 15,000,000 families in modest or low income groups will be owners of motor vehicles | of the present trend continues. The | remarkable extension of auto owner- ship among these families in this country is held unparalleled in any other nation in the world. The “typical motorist” in the United States rides an | average of 40 eight-hour days a yvear, | & survey discloses. He must work from one to two weeks to pay the taxes on that travel. Therefore, those who are | becoming alarmed at the increased ‘taxes on motoring believe that most operators of cars are carrying more than their share of the tax burden The leadership of the United States has little competition in motoring | lines. It ranks first in automobile | ownership with 26,211,052 vehicles | for 127,521,000 population. This is an average of one vehicle io every five persons. About two-thirds of all the | automobiles in the entire world oper- | ate on American highways. All other | countries have a general average of | one vehicle for 169 persons. New Zealand ranks next to the United States with one motor vehicle to eight | persons: Canada, 1 to 9: Australia, |1 to 11: France, 1 to 20: United | | Kingdom, 1 to 23; Denmark, 1 to 28; | | Sweden. 1 to 39; Uruguay, 1 to 41, | and Norway, 1 to 46. China has only | one vehicle to 8,920 persons: India, |1 to 3.463; Turkey, 1 to 1,924, and | Poland, 1 to 1,283. Out of a total estimated world | consumption of gasoline in 1935 of 26,- 190.936,000 gallons, the United States used 18,265,674,000 gallons, or 697 gzallons per vehicle. This compares | with an average of 702 gallens for each of the 37,329.209 automobiles in_the entire world. The high con- (See HOWARD, Page 5.) | AUTSYOBILE WEPT into motordom on a wave perity, so futuristic as to that this year's automobile is headed toward a new era. | Semi-automatic and remote con- trol transmissions are only a part of the picture of tomorrow’s automobile available today. Well to the fore in the year's offerings is the new type | of ride made possible by radical changes in rear-wheel suspension. A significant step is the first appear- ance of air conditioning for winter motoring. Close on the heels of this | innovation is the new style trend best described as a leaning forward of hood and fenders to typify motion With individual manufacturers clinging to their convictions with re- | gard to number and arrangement of cylinders, type of brakes, body lines, | | wheelbase and engine types the only | way to obtain a true picture of Yhel amazing line-up for 1938 is to re- view all the offerings. With this thought in mind I have prepared the following digests BUICK | Beginning with the popular priced | Special Buick's 1938 line extends to| the Century and oadmaster, and is| | topped by the Limited. For easy com- | parison the wheelbases are, respec- tively, 122, 126, 133 and 140 inches. Series 40, the Special, has an engine | of 248-cubic-inch displacement devel- | oping 107 horsepower at 3,400 revolu- tions per minute, with a compression ratio of 6.15 to 1. Series 60, 80 and 90 carry an engine 320.18 cubic| inches, developing 141 horsepower at | 3,600 revolutions per minute, with| |'a compression ration of 6.35 to 1. All | of the Bufck valve-in-head straight- | eight Dvnaflash engines feature the | turbulator piston which boosts power | sible matching tioning and New Wheel Sus- pension Are Innovations. BY FREDERICK C. RUSSELL. of renewed confidence in the automo« bile industry’s ability to keep in the vanguard of progress and prose the 1938 automobile makes its bow at the annual. motor-car exhibition in such dramatic style as to set to rest all rumor that it would be merely a refined edition of its predecessor make conservatives hesitant about buying them, observer cannot escape the conclusion &— - While the new models are not the nearly 8 per cent. A hump on one side of the piston top forces the com= pressed gas vapor over toward the spark pl resulting in turbulence which gives greater performance withe out increasing gasoline consumption Buick is pioneering with what it calls torque-free springing. It is accom- plished by using coils for all four wheels instead of merely for the knee- action front wheels. This eliminates static friction which exists in all cone ventional leaf springs, and makes pos- of front and rear springs. Ra rods take care of the drive and torque, leaving the springs free to protect the car against road shock. Unusually large shock absorbe ers, set at an angle of 45 degrees, serve several purposes and combine with the other features in giving these new Buicks what is said to be & highly desirable ride. At extra cost Buick's new self-shifte ing transmission is available in all 1933 models. The ~onventional gear hift lever is completely eliminated. Ninety per cent of the driving can be done in a quiet fourth speed, which increases gas economy nearly 8 per cent. _CADILLAC— LA SALLE ‘The 1938 line-up of the Cadillac Mo« tor Car Co. begins with the 125-horse~ power La Salle in five body styles mounted on a 124-inch wheelbase, ex~ tends to the 125-horsepower Cadillac V-8 in three body models on the 132-inch wheelbase, touches new lux- ury in the 140-horsepower Cadillas Fleetwoed and climaxes with the Cad- illac 16, which has an unusually cqmpact and light engine that de- velops 185 horsepower. The 12 Fleet- wood body styles .are’ presented’ on ases of 141 inches. Cadillac shes these cars with three ad- vances in mechanical design, one of which is entirely new to the industry. All of the cars now carry s new | zear-shifting method known as the “syncromatic.” The shift is con trolled by a large-knobber lever piaced beneath and parallel to the right side of the steering wheel. No study is required to operate the transmission. The driver merely throws out the clutch as usual, lifts the lever and draws it toward him for low gear. | The range is then followed as in cus- REPEAL OF U. S. TAX ON GASOLINE URGED | End of Highway Fund Diversion Also Asked in A. A. A’s “Mo- torist’s Bill of Rights.” Repeal of the Federal gasoline tax, reasonable taxation of gasoline by the States, and elimination of diversion of highway funds are advocated in a “bill of rights for motorists” adopted by the American Automobile Associa- tion and published in a booklet en- titled “Motor Vehicle Taxes.” “Special motor taxes and fees should be levied only by the State,” says the | A. A. A. “bill of rights” “No such | taxes or fees should be levied by the | Federal Government, any county or | municipality. “The sum total of highway require- | ments must be the only measure of | motor vehicle taxation. The rates for such taxation must be related to the average motorist's ability to pay. “The revenues from special motor vehicle fees and taxes should be dedicated exclusively to highway pur- poses. There should be adopted in every State appropriate provisions to prevent the diversion of motor vehicle revenue to other than highway pur- poses,” continues the bill of rights. “DATED” SERVICE New Designs Make It Vital to Have Servicing Keep Pace. New design in cars constantly calls for changes in service methods. There was a time, for instance, when it was | entirely satisfactory to give little thought to the engine when removing the transmission, but with modern en- gine mountings this would be bad business in the case of some cars. If the transmission support of the engine is removed from one of the most mod- ern and fine built cars the front rub- ber mountings of the engine will be damaged. The engine will sag to the rear and tilt upward at the front. To remedy this it is necessary to provide & temporary support for the rear of the engine when removing the gear case. '] Motorist Fixes Own Odds For or Against Safety of Driving As a motorist, you fix the odds in favor of or against the safety of your driving. So says the Keystone Auto- mobile Club on the basis of an analysis of the records of 100,000 drivers who made the odds against. themselves sufficiently high that they had accidents. Out of these mishaps, club statisticians have developed fig- ures which show how the driver increases the odds against safety by various types of traffic law viclations. The apparently most dangerous practice is that of cuttin~ out of line, which raises the odds in favor of an accident to 50 to 1. STUDY WILL TRIM ADDED CAR COSTS Careful Motorist Can Curtail Ex- penses by Increasing Oper- ating Efficiency. How will rising prices affect your motoring? Will you be able to pay the bigger bill without curbing .your use of the car, or will you be able to meet the problem of rising costs with greater operating efficiency and skillful economy? Every motorist should ask himself these questions. Not only are costs on a steadily upward rise, but the chances are that the trend has only just started. The bugaboo of infla- tion does not brighten the picture. There .are-ways to ‘meet the situa- tion—hedges, as the economists call them. These must be learned, some- times at the expense of considerable time and initiative. Certain it is that the man who is willing to spend some of his spare moments learning how to make the wheels go round more cheap- ly stands to benefit handsomely by the era of higher cost level. Executives Must Direct Safety Jobs Personally, Roper Says Commerce Secretary Hi's Present Preven- tion Methods. BY DANIEL C. ROPER. Secretary of Commerce. ‘While there are few situations in the world absolutely without hope, candor compels me to say that very little cause for optimism can be found in the field of accident preven- tion. This is particularly true in that segment relating to street and high- way fatalities. The fact is the gross number of na- tional fatalities is constantly on the increase. Regardless of the repeated efforts of special pleaders to prove by statistics that the highways are be- coming safer, our national death toll goes up year by year. It may be, as claimed, that fewer persons are killed per tank of gasoline or millions of miles traveled from year to year, but this fact, if it be a fact, does not cut down the total number of addi- tions to the mortuary list. Hence, the inevitable conclusion is the Na- tion as a whole is not making sub- stantial progress with 'its accident prevention efforts. Something is radically wrong with present. and past accident prevention methods. If this were untrue, the number of highway fatalities and in- Juries wouii decrease. My conviction is that accident pre- vention never will be effective until leading executives of the country, in- cluding those engaged in the manu- facture and sale over the safety” job personally and apply to it the same methods that they use to stop losses in their own businesses. Up to the present, the majority of these executives have contented themselves with voting rel- atively small appropriations for ac- cident prevention work and then leaving the active carrying out of the effort largely to so-called trained safety men. These executives meet \ { motor- cars, take SECRETARY ROPER. a few times in the course of each year with the professional accident prevention workers and receive re- ports, but they don’t go much beyond this point. The natural result is, that forthright industrial planning not being applied to accident pre- vention, the job is not done success- fully. And this fact is covered all too frequently in a maze of statistics which are not understood by the public and surely are not understood by the executives. Otherwise, they would not accept them, so. readily. .+Fhe “tiost encouraging present-day feature of accident prevention is that prominent men and wemen continue to express interest in it. Regrettable as it is that most of them do not go far beyond this point, there still is hope in the fact that they still ap- parently want to help. However, the mere killing of 37,000 persons on the highways in 1936 was insufficient to really awaken them. The time may : (See ROPER, Page 6)° e $169,114,000 Auto Taxes Diverted to Non-Road Uses The average cost of diversion of highway funds in 30 States in 1937 was $7.23 per motorist, an amount equivalent to more than 1 cent of the gasoline tax rates in those States. The 30 tates misappropriated to non- highway purposes a total of $169,114,000 of special taxes paid by their motorists. Diversion of highway funds is showing' an alarming increase, the American Petroleum Indus- tries Committee reports, saying that the amount of road funds diverted to non-highway purposes has shown a gain of 153 per cent during the past five years. 23 DRIVERS ADDED TO ROLL OF HONOR District of Columbia Motorists Among Those Recognized for Safety Records. Twenty-three drivers of Delaware, Maryland and District of Columbia were today added to the roll of honor of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey for having achieved a record of five years of safe driving of company equipment without an accident. They are among the 234 drivers in the company, which ‘maintains one of the largest truck fleets..in -the .world, who' have achieved this unusual record. ~ Among the drivers who have com- pleted five years or more without an accident are: C. L. Lauman, L. C. Catterton, J. B. Glesner, R. E. Givans, A. R. Ewell, O. M. Feaster, I. L. Martin, E. T. Matthews, M. L. Willard, T. F. Rohr, W. H. Elliott, J. B. Hanna, C. B. Minner, O. C. Hoxter, B. W. Hamblin, W. H. Gillis, G. B. Ewell, G. D. Carroll, J. T. Wolfe, W E. Totheroh, F. J. Juras, Andrew Richards and ‘Leroy Padgett. OIL REFINERY PAY AT ALL-TIME HIGH Figure of 96.6 Cents Per Hour Is 50 Per Cent Above Boom Year of 1929. Wages in the petroleum industry stood in July at 96.6 cents per hour, an all-time record high, and 50 per cent above the boom year of 1929. This compares with an average hourly wage of 65.7 per cent all other manufactur- ing industries in the United States. Hours of labor in the petroleum refining industry have been reduced. The average refinery worker now puts |in only 35.6 hours a week, or nearly | five hours less than the average for workers in other manufacturing in- dustries. Practical effects include the spreading out of employment and in- creasing the number of workers in the industry by 12 per cent. In 1929 the average work week in the refining industry was 49 hours and the average hourly wage was 64 cents, or approximately the rate that workers in other industries now are receiving. Despite the fact that the refinery worker’s week has heen reduced from 49 hours in 1929 to the current 35.6 hours, he now receives 8 per cent rmore weekly wages. . LIGHT CONTROL TIP City Lamps Often Enough When Driving Slow at Night. Perhaps you have discovered it for yourself, but the city lights of some cars offer sufficient lighting for mod- erate speed along the highway at night. Keeping to this one set of lights makes it unnecessary to bother with the foot switch for the depressed beam when other cars approach. ‘When driving faster many operators use the passing beam exclusively. It gives almost as good lighting as the driving beam and relieves the driver of the annoyance of changing the | rear axle. lights for each approaching car. [} d tomary practices. Second comes the radically designed engine of the 16, which shows a ratio of one horsepower to each 5.7 pounds of weight Third is the “synchro- flex” flywheel, which on Cadillac eights introduces a way to prevent the “bending” action of the crankshaft. A flexible disk injected near the hub of the flywheel keeps the flywheel rim | rigid torsionally but flexible in bend- | ing. Vibration, normally conducted to the body of the car, is eliminated, giving a new sense of effortiess power flow. Cadillac is using Hypoid axles and self-lubricating rear spring inserts. Alligator-type hoods have been adopted and body styling has been further ad- vanced along Cadillac lines. Grilles are more massive. Knee-action wheels, solid steel tops and uni-steel body construction isecontinued. CHEVROLET While retaining its distinctive speed line along the front doors and cowl sides, the 1938 Chevrolet has new hood treatment which, combined with the almost vertical flat-topped radiator and grille, gives the car an entirely new appearance. Both series of cars for 1938 carry the 6-cylinder, 85-horse« power, valve-in-head engine; feature hydraulic brakes, all-silent. Fisher bodies with turret tops, and the hypoid Fully-inclosed knee action is standard on the master de luxe series. There is a new and lighter flywheel, redesigned valves and valve springs, improved cooling and a change in the carburetor’s balancing vent system, so that pressure variations in fuel are vented into the air aqome instead of directly into the bowl. More. positive clutch action, with greater operating ease, is made available through the new “tiptoe-matic” clutch. An automatic detail in the choker system results in the engine’s suction pilling against the valve and opening it when the engine starts, regardless of whether the choke still is in the full choke position. This affords bet~ ter mileage through eliminating flood- ing. Due to widening the car’s rear tread to a full 59 inches greater body space in provided, giving 2 inches of extra width to the rear seat. Quieter operation of the car over any type of road is made possible through a new way of attaching the rear springs to the rear axle housing. Chevrolet is another of the 1938 cars to add a soft cushion to the top of the front seat back, so that passengers are protected if thrown forward during a sudden stop. There are five body types in the master series: the master de luxe (See RUSSELL, Page 10.) »