Business & Finance: General Motors

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President A. P. Sloan Jr. of General Motors last week told his stockholders that the corporation will immediately spend $40,000,000 as follows:

Chevrolet gets $8,000,000 to expand its plant. Now it is losing trade from inability to supply demand.

Oakland-Pontiac gets $5,000,000 for new construction at Pontiac, Mich. The 6-cylinder Pontiac, marketed for the first time this year, proved popular.

Buick, the sturdy prop of G. M. C., needs a body plant at Flint, Mich.; gets $5,000,000.

Frigidaire mechanical refrigerators promise to sell at 2,000 daily, which warrants the expentiture of $12,000,000 on Delco-Light Co. plants at Dayton, Ohio.

Drivurself. By establishing the Hertz Drivurself Corp.( subsidiary of G. M. C.'s Yellow Truck & Coach Mfg. Co.) to rent motors to the public, G. M. C. becomes an enormous (and profitmaking) consumer of its own cars and accessories. The idea deserves the $10,000,000 investment.

Stock Market. Last week G. M.C . common turned over 386,100 shares on the Manhattan Stock Exchange,* reached its record high of 149¼. President Sloan's statement to stockholders had less to do with the situation than the facts that G. M. C.'s earnings for the first quarter of this year were $38,733,942 ($7.50 a share) and that for the first half they are estimated at $87,730,000 ($17 a share).