Business & Finance: H.J.'s Allstate

Sears, Roebuck and Kaiser-Frazer have one thing in common: they have both lost money selling cars. Forty-one years ago, the Sears catalogue offered a two-cylinder car for less than $500, which would whiz along "from one to 25 miles per hour [on] resilient, hard-rubber tires." Sears dropped its auto after losing $21,000 on it in 1912. But Kaiser-Frazer, which has been making cars for six years and lost $13 million last year alone, is not that easily discouraged. Last week K-F made a deal that put Sears back in the auto business and got K-F some of the selling help it badly needs.

Before Christmas, Sears retail stores will start selling the Allstate, a new car made for it by Kaiser-Frazer. The car will look like K-F's four-cylinder Henry J, differing only in trim and other incidentals. Sears did not set a retail price but it now sells for $1,362 f.o.b. Detroit. Sears will sell it in 17 cities in the South and Southwest.

The deal was not the first between Kaiser and Sears. Three years ago a Kaiser subsidiary, now Kaiser Metal Products, began making bathtubs and other enamelware for Sears, after Sears had bought a substantial part of the company's stock. With the Allstate, Sears expects to boost sales of its other Allstate products: tires, batteries, spark plugs, now made for it by about 500 different companies.