Foreign News: Swank

Decorously joining in on the national party given this week by the U. S. motor industry (see p. 93), foreign makers last week gave prosperous U. S. citizens an opportunity to recapture the thrill they had in childhood when Mother brought home from London a Daimler exactly like Queen Alexandra's or Father returned from Berlin with a bellowing Blitzen-Benz.

There is something about some foreign cars which has been factually stated thus: "Rolls-Royce Ltd. give a comprehensive three years' guarantee with every new chassis sold by them. Under the terms of this guarantee not only is any defective part replaced, but it is also fitted to the chassis free of charge." There is also something about the little British roadbug at the humorous other extreme from Rolls-Royce, the Baby Austin. And on sale in Manhattan last week, after five years of successful manufacture by the German firm of Mercédès-Benz, was a medium-sized car in which the most advanced European features of construction have been merged: tube frame, engine at the rear, independent springing of all four wheels.

For years U. S. motor manufacturers have urged lowering of the U. S. tariff on cars, with the idea that only after this was done could they win reciprocal tariff cuts abroad and break heavily into European markets. Today, with the U. S. tariff on imported cars down to a trifling 10%, they are being bought for fun and swank in commercially negligible quantities. U. S. makers watch foreign imports in a mood of amused tolerance far different from that of automobile men overseas. In the United Kingdom the industry is so scared of U. S. and even Canadian competition that it buys full-page ads to fight foreign cars as such. Some of these advertisements attempt the fear appeal. In one, a British couple are shown shamefacedly scuttling out of their golf club, as the wife says to her husband, "I always feel uneasy here. We seem to be the only people with a foreign car." In another, an extremely British sales manager in impeccable striped trousers brings blushing shame to the cheeks of one of his salesmen with the hint: "I don't think it looks well for one of our representatives to run a foreign car." Nevertheless Edward VIII has a new Canadian Buick which the horrified United Kingdom industry considers "foreign."

Delivered in Manhattan this week the Baby Austin, which is called by its makers the "Nippy Sports" model (see cut p. 33), sells for $745 with a special "super-engine" of 21 h. p., or for $695 with the standard Baby Austin engine which develops 17 h. p. (rated for tax purposes at 7.8 h. p.). In cheapest standard roadster form, the Austin is offered in Manhattan for $495, with 40 mi. per gal. promised. Efforts to manufacture Austins in the U. S. miserably failed (TIME, Sept. 2, 1935), because they obviously cannot be sold to the U. S. masses in competition with U. S. cars of similar price, but the importers last week hoped to do a brisk trade in "Nippy Sports" as novelties.