AUTOS: New Bosses at G.M.

Frederic Garrett Donner, a slight (5 ft. 8 in.), bespectacled, grey-haired commuter, catches the 7:34 out of Port Washington, L.I. each workday morning for Manhattan's Penn Station, where he changes to the subway for his Columbus Circle office. Like many another straphanger, Donner has a habit of leaning out impatiently over the subway platform to see whether his train is coming. Last week the uptown train roared in for Fred Donner, 55. In a major shift of General Motors personnel, Financial Vice President Donner was tapped to succeed retiring President Harlow Curtice as boss of the world's largest industrial corporation.

Strictly speaking, Figure Wizard Donner did not succeed "Red" Curtice, the whiz-bang salesman, production and styling expert. In the shift, Curtice's job and power were split. Donner was named board chairman (succeeding Albert Bradley) and chief executive officer. For the presidency, the board picked a dark-horse candidate from G.M.'s executive pool: lean (160 Ibs.), baldish John Franklin Gordon, 58, who had been vice president for the body and assembly divisions. Fred Donner will continue to work from New York, watch G.M.'s pocketbook, speak for the company on broad policy. Jack Gordon will handle production in Detroit, probably do much of the talking about cars, refrigerators, diesel locomotives, research.

No Speeches, No Cars. In selecting the new officers, G.M. was as tight-lipped as the Kremlin picking new Politburo members. But from the results, one aim was obvious; the new team is meant to end the one-man executive direction that began with "Engine Charlie" Wilson. After him came another powerhouse, Red Curtice. The board of directors sometimes disagreed with Curtice, particularly over marketing and the hard sell. But Curtice usually won out because the board could hardly quibble with his results. Under him, G.M. logged its most profitable years, now has its largest share ever (54%) of the auto market. With Curtice at the mandatory retirement age (65), the board seized the chance to return to the old team operation of president and chairman of Alfred P. Sloan Jr.'s day.

Despite 32 years of service with G.M., Donner is a man almost no one knows. He has made neither speeches nor cars. All he knows about the corporation—and it is a great deal—he learned not in the shops, like Curtice, Wilson, William S. Knudsen and Sloan, but from executive meetings, balance sheets and reports.

Corsets & Buggy Whips. Like Curtice and Wilson, Donner was born in a small Midwestern town. His father was accountant for the only plant—a featherbone factory making corsets and buggy whips—in tiny (pop. 1,500) Three Oaks, Mich. Donner went regularly to the Congregational Sunday School, shied from athletics, read voraciously, mostly history. His life was orderly. Remembered a childhood friend last week: "He had a routine even as a boy. So much time for work, so much for play and so much for study." Donner's parents put him through the University of Michigan because, explained his aged mother: "A boy can't become an honor student unless you pay his way." Fred became an honor student in economics, got straight A's (except one history B), made Phi Beta Kappa.