Autos: Modest, Mixed, but Unmistakable

Even as their sales figures plummeted with last winter's temperatures, optimists among the nation's automakers clung to the prediction that 8,300,000 cars would be sold in the U.S. in 1967. This would make it the third best year in history, after 1965's record 9,300,000 sales and last year's 9,000,000. All that was needed, Detroit figured, was a springtime upturn in sales. This month, with spring in its waning days, something of the sort was finally evident.

First came the news that industry sales in May, with General Motors and Chrysler both registering gains, were up 7% over May 1966, the first month this year that Detroit has bettered year-earlier performances. Last week, Ford got into the act, announcing that its sales during June's first ten days were a whopping 21% ahead of the same period last year. With Chrysler again advancing (though General Motors slipped slightly), overall industry sales in early June were 4% better than last year's pace. Said Ford Division General Manager M. S. McLaughlin: "This is the turn-around we have been expecting."

Modest and mixed though it may be, the improvement was especially welcome, since the downturn that had been hurting Detroit seemed not to affect imports. In fact, sales of foreign-made autos are running 14% ahead of last year, when a record 658,000 imports were sold in the U.S., and foreign automakers now expect to sell better than 700,000 cars by year's end. The likelihood of an import record is even more remarkable since Volkswagen, though still accounting for well over half of all imports, is selling no more cars in the U.S. than it did last year.

Pleasant Headache. But impressive gains are being scored by others, as evidenced by the No. 2 import, West Germany's G.M.-made Opel, which has sold 21,000 cars in the U.S. so far this year, almost double last year's pace. Partly accounting for the foreigners' success is the fact that most have escaped the adverse safety publicity that has plagued domestic carmakers. When Washington's new safety standards take effect on 1968 models, however, the tables are likely to be turned. Automotive News recently reported that ten foreign makers may have to drop out of the U.S. market because their share of sales does not justify the expense of meeting the new standards.

For their part, U.S. manufacturers are eager for the 1968 model-year changeover. Because of the recent sales upturn, the number of new cars remaining in showrooms should be at a manageable level when 1967-model production ends this summer. Indeed, so low have inventories shrunk already —Oldsmobile's F-85, for example, now has only a 28-day supply—that Detroit actually anticipates a newer, more pleasant headache. Even before 1968 models come out, manufacturers may actually run out of some 1967 models.