When Johnny Comes Riding Home

All that Americans must do to get the car they have always wanted is to win the war. The scrapping of present dies for munitions (TIME, May 18) and war's speed-up of industrial invention are bringing extraordinary changes nearer. Soon after war's end, Americans will be able to ride in cars that look like a tear drop, an egg, or a flatiron.

Like the gunner in a Flying Fortress, they may look out through a transparent plastic top. Car bodies may be of plastic panels, tougher than steel. Tires, smaller than now, may be made of synthetic rubber. With better weight-to-horsepower ratio, with zoo-octane (instead of 74) gas in the tank, post-war cars are likely to get more miles to the gallon. Best news of all: there is a good chance they will be cheaper, perhaps as cheap as $300 (1942 value).

Top-notch designers, dreaming of the field day they will have at war's end, now chiefly dispute where to put the engine. Said Detroit's independent George W. Walker "In the rear, where it's belonged all along." Ford's tall E. T. ("Bob") Gregorie, whose laboratory is Edsel Ford's favorite port of call, demurred.

A constant weight on the front wheels makes a smooth ride, he said, while the absence of a hood would bring the road too close to the driver, tire his eyes. "If the air-cooled engine is generally adopted," said cautious Bob Gregorie, "It will be compact and could be placed anywhere."

One striking design for the post-war car has already come from Manhattan's Raymond Loewy, who once called the egg the "functionally perfect shape, the symbol of progress." Abandoning the egg for some-thing closer to a motorboat, French-born Designer Loewy would fashion his car of light, unpainted alloys, plastics, nonreflecting glass. With a liquid-cooled engine in the rear, he would leave the present-day hood as a concession to popular taste, a storage space for tires, battery, air-conditioner. The undercarriage would be faired-in (streamlined). Doors and windows would operate by push button. It is possible that present auto manufacturers would not have the post-war car all to themselves. Autos may be a logical changeover for the airplane makers. They were too busy with war work last week to make any predictions.

But there came a hint from Detroit's unconventional Bill Stout, whose famed engineering-jargon dictum is: "Simplicate, and add more light-ness." Said Designer Stout: "Airplane manufacturers know immensely more about making gears than auto manufacturers. They can build a better, bigger car."