Detroit's Uphill Battle

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an American economic decline. European and Japanese carmakers, who once slavishly copied Detroit's methods, now turn out products that are more stylish, more economical and better designed. U.S. consumers often drive to the shopping center in a Japanese mini-pickup, rather than in an American station wagon.

The auto industry, the granddaddy of the 20th century industrial revolution, has become the first candidate for the new American imperative called reindustrialization, the total remaking of U.S. industry. Detroit's old ways of doing business no longer suffice. The industry's billions are now being spent to design and build cars that meet the demands of the new fuel-short era. Automakers are stripping clean their plants and are rebuilding them with new automated machinery that will increase productivity. Workers, plant supervisors and white-collar executives are searching for ways to improve quality and output. Both Government and business are setting aside past acrimony and seeking ways to revitalize Detroit. The roles and responsibilities of workers, managers and Government officials in the auto industry are rapidly changing, and the new industrial order developed there will have a profound impact on all U.S. business.

No society has ever been built on the automobile like the U.S.'s. In his novel Lolita, the late Vladimir Nabokov had his hero drive mindlessly around the U.S. because that represented the quintessential American experience. With only 5.3% of the total world population, Americans drive almost 40% of the world's motor vehicles. There is a car for almost every single licensed driver: 120 million, vs. 143 million. Americans use their cars for work and play; they eat in them, sleep in them, pray in them, see movies in them, even make love in them. Some of the country's largest cities, among them Los Angeles and Houston, could scarcely exist without the automobile.

Auto production has become one of the single largest industries in the U.S. economy. Car manufacturers, suppliers, dealers and repairmen account for about one-fifth of the country's gross national product. Autos create employment for almost one in five American workers. The industry uses 60% of the country's synthetic rubber, 50% of its malleable iron, 33% of its zinc, 25% of its steel and 17% of its aluminum. Motor vehicles also consume nearly 40% of the 6.7 billion bbl. of oil used in the U.S. every year.

Detroit's current troubles, therefore, have sent tremors through other vital sectors of the U.S. economy. Akron rubber workers, faced with layoffs like those in the auto industry, are accepting extraordinary reductions in their wage contracts, a development seldom known since the Depression. Even 200 Montana miners have lost their jobs because the low-sulfur coal they were digging is no longer needed to power Detroit's auto plants. Textile workers in North Carolina are out of work because demand has ebbed for the carpeting that they make for car interiors. In all, declining auto sales have cost 650,000 jobs in related businesses. Says Ford Chairman Philip Caldwell: "It's not really just the auto business. I think we're talking about the industrial capability of the nation."

The U.S. auto industry has gone through sales slumps before, most recently in 1974 after the Arab oil embargo. But this year's crisis is