OCTOBER 14, 1935-F. D. Changed Auto Show Dates; Will Buyers Change Habits?
New York Auto Show 1935 Grand Central Palace De Soto
THE WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS — MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1935
F. D. Changed Auto Show Dates; Will Buyers Change Habits?
By ERNIE PYLE
Autos, like monthly magazines and Easter clothes, are coming out ahead of time this year.
Next year’s models will be announced and shown at the big shows on Nov. 2, and some of the manufacturers have jumped even that advanced hurdle and have their ’36 jobs already on the streets in the hands of the customers.
The reason for it all is President Roosevelt. Last spring he asked the auto makers to hold their annual winter show in November instead of December. The idea was to try to spread out employment. The auto men said o.k., and here is how it works:
In the past, the auto companies were shut down from six weeks to three months in the early winter, to install new machinery for the coming models. All the thousands of employees were out of work just as cold weather came on, when they needed money the most.
But this year, the auto plants have been shut down on the average of only about a month, and that in warm weather; whereas in the past the factories in September and October were like mausoleums, today they have been roaring again at full speed for a month, and there is hardly a plant in the country that hasn’t already turned out hundreds of 1936 models.
It has been almost impossible, they say, to buy a 1935 model for the past month. The dealers like the new idea; it gives them a chance to clean up all their ’35 models, then spend a month selling second-hand cars, and be ready for the November rush.
That is, if there’s going to be a rush. That’s where the nubbin is. People are in the habit of buying their new cars in the spring, and maybe you can’t change a national buying habit just like that. Maybe the dealers will have all these cars on their hands for the winter, and will have to take them home and put them behind the kitchen stove, and then go out to the penny restaurant to eat.
But the thing has accomplished President Roosevelt’s idea of spreading out the work, leveling off the peaks and valleys in auto employment, giving men work all thru the hard winter. Whether or not the early show date is continued next year, depends largely on how the public buys cars during the winter.
And what about the new cars themselves? Well, nothing much. There is little radical change you can hardly tell the difference in some of them. Just little refinements, as the witnesses say. This year the streamlining business hasn’t gone any further.
With the great howl about auto accidents all over the nation, the manufacturers are talking much about safety this year. But as far as I can see, it is mostly talk. Cars are well made, of course, but I have seen no automatic devices to reach out and take the wheel at the crucial moment and say, “Move over, you dope.”
Here are a few pearls of information that interested me, maybe they will you:
Up to Sept. 1 this year, just a few under 2,000,000 cars were sold. This is 5 per cent greater than all of 1934. The New York auto show has been held in January for 35 years. This year it’s Nov. 2. Ford won’t go in, but will hold his own New York show at the same time. Shows will open Nov. 2 also in Washington and Baltimore, and within a week of that date in Columbus, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Philadelphia. Wages in auto plants now are some 15 per cent above a year ago. General Motors is spending 50 millions on new machinery, Ford 25 millions, Chrysler 11 millions. In Washington, D.C., twice as many autos have been sold this year as last year. They almost reached the peak year of 1929. Thirty-five years ago 96 per cent of all cars were open; today 99 per cent are closed. Buick is making the most pronounced body style shift, but they’re not saying what it is. The top 10 cars in production in America are Ford, Chevrolet, Plymouth, Dodge, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Hudson, Chrysler and Studebaker.
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