AUTOS: Treading Water

For a moment, the auto industry got its head above hot water. Combined U.S. and Canadian output last week: 91,260 cars and trucks, a new postwar high.

But automakers are still just treading water. Total production since V-J day was only 35% of expectations. Output of passenger cars for the first seven months of this year was 862,373, as compared with 2,771,350 for the same months of record-high 1941.

Biggest drag was continuing supplier strikes; General Motors alone was burdened with 63, down from 143 at the end of May. Chrysler had to shut down this week to let parts supplies and materials catch up, a move that will cut the week's total production by at least 20,000 units. And somewhere in the murky water was the added threat, first visible last fortnight, of new wage demands by the C.I.O.'s United Automobile Workers. First on U.A.W's list: Chrysler.

Assuming that the industry could get moving under all this, the mass desire for new automobiles would still go largely ungratified for a year or two. Even if conditions were ideal, manufacturers could not make new cars as fast as the old ones are falling apart.