Wheels

by Arthur Hailey

  Teddy Osch led the way, under a faded red awning, into the restaurant’s unpretentious interior. En route, no one had said more than a word or two. Now, on being shown to a table in a small rear room reserved for habitués, Osch silently raised three fingers. Moments later three martinis in chilled glasses were placed before them.

  “I’m not going to do anything stupid like cry,” Barbara said, “and I won’t get drunk because you always feel so awful after. But if you both don’t mind, I intend to get moderately loaded.” She downed the martini. “I’d like another, please.”

  Osch beckoned a waiter. “Make it three.”

  “Teddy,” Barbara said, “how the hell do you stand it?”

  Osch passed a hand pensively across his baldness. “The first twenty years are hardest. After that, when you’ve seen a dozen J. P. Underwoods come and go …”

  Nigel Knox exploded as if he had been bottling up a protest. “He’s a beastly person. I tried to like him, but I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Oh shut up, Nigel,” Barbara said.

  Osch continued, “The trick is to remind yourself that the pay is good, and most times—except today—I like the work. There isn’t a business more exciting. I’ll tell you something else: No matter how well they’ve built the Orion, if it’s a success, and sells, it’ll be because of us and advertising. They know it; we know it. So what else matters?”

  “Keith Yates-Brown matters,” Barbara said. “And he makes me sick.”

  Nigel Knox mimicked in a high-pitched voice, “That’s generous of you, J.P. Damn generous! Now I’m going to lie down, J.P., and I hope you’ll pee all over me.”

  Knox giggled. For the first time since this morning’s meeting, Barbara laughed.

  Teddy Osch glared at them both. “Keith Yates-Brown is my meal ticket and yours, and let’s none of us forget it. Sure, I couldn’t do what he does—keep snugged up to Underwood’s and other people’s anuses and look like I enjoyed it, but it’s a part of this business which somebody has to take care of, so why fault him for a thorough job? Right now, and plenty of other times while we’re doing the creative bit, which we like, Yates-Brown is in bed with the client, stroking whatever’s necessary to keep him warm and happy, and telling him about us, how great we are. And if you’d ever been in an agency which lost an automotive account, you’d know why I’m glad he is.”

  A waiter bustled up. “Veal Parmigiana’s good today.” At Joe & Rose no one bothered with frills like menus.

  Barbara and Nigel Knox nodded. “Okay, with noodles,” Osch told the waiter. “And martinis all around.”

  Already, Barbara realized, the liquor had relaxed them. Now, the session was following a familiar pattern—at first gloomy, then self-consoling; soon, after one more martini probably, it would become philosophic. In her own few years at the OJL agency she had attended several post-mortems of this kind, in New York at advertising “in” places like Joe & Rose, in Detroit at the Caucus Club or Jim’s Garage, downtown. It was at the Caucus she had once seen an elderly advertising man break down and sob because months of his work had been brusquely thrown out an hour earlier.

  “I worked at an agency once,” Osch said, “where we lost a car account. It happened just before the weekend; nobody expected it, except the other agency which took the account away from us. We called it ‘Black Friday.’”

  He fingered the stem of his glass, looking back across the years. “A hundred agency people were fired that Friday afternoon. Others didn’t wait to be fired; they knew there was nothing left for them, so they scurried up and down Madison and Third, trying for jobs at other places before they closed. Guys were scared. A good many had fancy homes, big mortgages, kids in college. Trouble is, other agencies don’t like the smell of losers; besides, some of the older guys were just plain burned out. I remember, two hit the bottle and stayed on it; one committed suicide.”

  “You survived,” Barbara said.

  “I was young. If it happened now, I’d go the way the others did.” He raised his glass. “To Keith Yates-Brown.”

  Nigel Knox placed his partially drunk martini on the table. “Oh no, really. I couldn’t possibly.”

  Barbara shook her head. “Sorry, Teddy.”

  “Then I’ll drink the toast alone,” Osch said. And did.

  “The trouble with our kind of advertising,” Barbara said, “is that we offer a nonexistent car to an unreal person.” The three of them had almost finished their latest martinis; she was aware of her own speech slurring. “We all know you couldn’t possibly buy the car that’s in the ads, even if you wanted to, because the photographs are lies. When we take pictures of the real cars we use a wide-angle lens to balloon the front, a stretch lens to make the side view longer. We even make the color look better than it is with spray and powder puffs and camera filters.”

  Osch waved a hand airily. “Tricks of the trade.”

  A waiter saw the hand wave. “Another round, Mr. Osch? Your food will be here soon.”

  The creative chief nodded.

  Barbara insisted, “It’s still a nonexistent car.”

  “That’s jolly good!” Nigel Knox clapped vigorously, knocking over his empty glass and causing occupants of other tables to glance their way amusedly. “Now tell us who’s the unreal person we advertise it to.”

  Barbara spoke slowly, her thoughts fitting together less readily than usual. “Detroit executives who have the final word on advertising don’t understand people. They work too hard; there isn’t time. Therefore most car advertising consists of a Detroit executive advertising to another Detroit executive.”

  “I have it!” Nigel Knox bobbed up and down exuberantly. “Everybody knows a Detroit panjandrum is an unreal person. Clever! Clever!”

  “So are you,” Barbara said. “I don’t think, at this point, I could even think panjan … wotsit, let alone say it.” She put a hand to her face, wishing she had drunk more slowly.

  “Don’t touch the plates,” their waiter warned, “they’re hot.” The Veal Parmigiana, with savoury steaming noodles was put before them, plus another three martinis. “Compliments a the next table,” the waiter said.

  Osch acknowledged the drinks, then sprinkled red peppers liberally on his noodles.

  “My goodness,” Nigel Knox warned, “those are terribly hot.”

  The creative chief told him, “I need a new fire in me.”

  There was a silence while they began eating, then Teddy Osch looked across at Barbara. “Considering the way you feel, I guess it’s all to the good you’re coming off the Orion program.”

  “What?” Startled, she put down her knife and fork.

  “I was supposed to tell you. I hadn’t got around to it.”

  “You mean I’m fired?”

  He shook his head. “New assignment. You’ll hear tomorrow.”

  “Teddy,” she pleaded, “you have to tell me now.”

  He said firmly, “No. You’ll get it from Keith Yates-Brown. He’s the one who recommended you. Remember?—the guy you wouldn’t drink a toast to.”

  Barbara had an empty feeling.

  “All I can tell you,” Osch said, “is I wish it were me instead of you.” He sipped his fresh martini; of the three of them, he was the only one still drinking. “If I was younger I think it might have been me. But I guess I’ll go on doing what I always have: advertising that nonexistent car to the unreal person.”

  “Teddy,” Barbara said, “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. The sad thing is, I think you’re right.” The creative chief blinked. “Christ! Those peppers are hotter than I thought.” He produced a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

  7

  Some thirty miles outside Detroit, occupying a half thousand acres of superb Michigan countryside, the auto company’s proving ground lay like a Balkan state bristling with defended borders. Only one entrance to the proving ground existed—through a security-policed double barrier, remarkably similar to East-West Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie. Here,
visitors were halted to have credentials examined; no one, without prearranged authority, got in.

  Apart from this entry point, the entire area was enclosed by a high, chain-link fence, patrolled by guards. Inside the fence, trees and other protective planting formed a visual shield against watchers from outside.

  What the company was guarding were some of its more critical secrets. Among them: experiments with new cars, trucks, and their components, as well as drive-to-destruction performance tests on current models.

  The testing was carried out on some hundred and fifty miles of roads—routes to nowhere—ranging from specimens of the very best to the absolute worst or most precipitous in the world. Among the latter was a duplicate of San Francisco’s horrendously steep Filbert Street, appropriately named (so San Franciscans say) since only nuts drive down it. A Belgian block road jolted every screw, weld, and rivet in a car, and set drivers’ teeth chattering. Even rougher, and used for truck trials, was a replica of an African game trail, with tree roots, rocks, and mud holes.

  One road section, built on level ground, was known as Serpentine Alley. This was a series of sharp S-bends, closely spaced and absolutely flat, so that absence of any banking in the turns strained a car to its limits when cornering at high speed.

  At the moment, Adam Trenton was hurling an Orion around Serpentine Alley at 60 mph.

  Tires screamed savagely, and smoked, as the car flung hard left, then right, then left again. Each time, centrifugal force strained urgently, protestingly, against the direction of the turn. To the three occupants it seemed as if the car might roll over at any moment, even though knowledge told them that it shouldn’t.

  Adam glanced behind him. Brett DeLosanto, sitting centrally in the rear seat, was belted in, as well as bracing himself by his arms on either side.

  The designer called over the seatback, “My liver and spleen just switched sides. I’m counting on the next bend to get them back.”

  Beside Adam, Ian Jameson, a slight, sandy-haired Scot from Engineering, sat imperturbably. Jameson was undoubtedly thinking what Adam realized—that there was no necessity for them to be going around the turns at all; professional drivers had already put the Orion through grueling tests there which it survived handily. The trio’s real purpose at the proving ground today was to review an NVH problem (the initials were engineerese for Noise, Vibration, and Harshness) which prototype Orions had developed at very high speed. But on their way to the fast track they had passed the entry to Serpentine Alley, and Adam swung on to it first, hoping that throwing the car around would release some of his own tension, which he had continued to be aware of since his departure from the press session an hour or two earlier.

  The tension, which started early this morning, had occurred more frequently of late. So a few weeks ago Adam made an appointment with a physician who probed, pressed, performed assorted tests, and finally told him there was nothing wrong organically except, possibly, too much acid in his system. The doctor then talked vaguely of “ulcer personality,” the need to stop worrying, and added a kindergarten bromide, “A hill is only as steep as it looks to the man climbing it.”

  While Adam listened impatiently, wishing that medics would assume more knowledge and intelligence on the part of patients, the doctor pointed out that the human body had its own built-in warning devices and suggested easing up for a while, which Adam already knew was impossible this year. The doctor finally got down to what Adam had come for and prescribed Librium capsules with a recommended dosage. Adam promptly exceeded the dosage, and continued to. He also failed to tell the doctor that he was taking Valium, obtained elsewhere. Today, Adam had swallowed several pills, including one just before leaving downtown, but without discernible effect. Now, since the S-turns had done nothing to release his tension either, he surreptitiously transferred another pill from a pocket to his mouth.

  The action reminded him that he still hadn’t told Erica, either about the visit to the doctor, or the pills, which he kept in his briefcase, out of sight.

  Near the end of Serpentine Alley, Adam swung the car sharply, letting the speed drop only slightly before heading for the track which was used for high-speed runs. Outside, the trees, meadows, and connecting roads sped by. The speedometer returned to 60, then edged to 65.

  With one hand, Adam rechecked the tightness of his own lap straps and shoulder harness. Without turning his head, he told the others, “Okay, let’s shake this baby out.”

  They hurtled on the fast track, sweeping past another car, their speed still climbing. It was 70 mph, and Adam caught a glimpse of a face as the driver of the other car glanced sideways.

  Ian Jameson craned left to watch the speedometer needle, now touching 75. The sandy-haired engineer had been a key figure in studying the Orion’s present NVH problem.

  “We’ll hear it any moment,” Jameson said.

  Speed was 78. The wind, largely of their own creating, roared as they flew around the track. Adam had the accelerator floored. Now he touched the automatic speed control, letting the computer take over, and removed his foot. Speed crept up. It passed 80.

  “Here she comes,” Jameson said. As he spoke, the car shuddered violently—an intense pulsation, shaking everything, including occupants. Adam found his vision blurring slightly from the rapid movement. Simultaneously a metallic hum rose and fell.

  The engineer said, “Right on schedule.” He sounded complacent, Adam thought, as if he would have been disappointed had the trouble not appeared.

  “At fair grounds …” Brett DeLosanto raised his voice to a shout to make himself heard; his words came through unevenly because of the shaking. “At fair grounds, people pay money for a ride like this.”

  “And if we left it in,” Adam said, “most drivers would never know about it. Not many take their cars up to eighty.”

  Ian Jameson said, “But some do.”

  Adam conceded gloomily: it was true. A handful of madcap drivers would hit eighty, and among them one or two might be startled by the sudden vibration, then lose control, killing or maiming themselves and others. Even without accident, the NVH effect could become known, and people like Emerson Vale would make the most of it. It was a few freak accidents at high speed, Adam recalled, with drivers who over- or understeered in emergencies, which had killed the Corvair only a few years ago. And although by the time Ralph Nader published his now-famous indictment of the Corvair, early faults had been corrected, the car had still gone to a precipitate end under the weight of publicity which Nader generated.

  Adam, and others in the company who knew about the high-speed shake, had no intention of allowing a similar episode to mar the Orion’s record. It was a reason why the company high command was being close-mouthed so that rumors of the trouble did not leak outside. A vital question at this moment was: How could the shake be eliminated and what would it cost? Adam was here to find out and, because of the urgency, had authority to make decisions.

  He took back control from the car’s computer and allowed the speed to fall off to 20 mph. Then, twice more, at differing rates of acceleration he took it up to 80. Each time, both the vibration and the point at which it occurred were identical.

  “There’s a difference in sheet metal on this car.” Adam remembered that the Orion he was driving was an early prototype, handmade—as were all prototypes so far—because assembly line manufacture had not yet started.

  “Makes no difference to the effect,” Ian Jameson declared flatly. “We’ve had an exact Orion out here, another on the dynamometer. They all do it. Same speed, same NVH.”

  “It feels like a woman having an orgasm,” Brett said. “Sounds like it, too.” He asked the engineer, “Does it do any harm?”

  “As far as we can tell, no.”

  “Then it seems a shame to take it out.”

  Adam snapped, “For Christ’s sake, cut the stupidity! Of course we have to take it out! If it were an appearance problem, you wouldn’t be so goddam smug.”

  “Well, well
,” Brett said. “Something else appears to be vibrating.”

  They had left the fast track. Abruptly, Adam braked the car, skidding so that all three were thrown forward against their straps. He turned onto a grass shoulder. As the car stopped, he unbuckled, then got out and lit a cigarette. The others followed.

  Outside the car, Adam shivered slightly. The air was briskly cool, fall leaves were blowing in a gusty wind, and the sun, which had been out earlier, had disappeared behind an overcast of gray nimbostratus. Through trees, he could see a lake, its surface ruffled bleakly.

  Adam pondered the decision he had to make. He was aware it was a tough one for which he would be blamed—justly or unjustly—if it went wrong.

  Ian Jameson broke the uncomfortable silence. “We’re satisfied that the effect is induced by tire and road surfaces when one or the other becomes in phase with body harmonics, so the vibration is natural body frequency.”

  In other words, Adam realized, there was no structural defect in the car. He asked, “Can the vibration be overcome?”

  “Yes,” Jameson said. “We’re sure of that, also that you can go one of two ways. Either redesign the cowl side structure and underbody torque boxes”—he filled in engineering details—“or add braces and reinforcement.”

  “Hey!” Brett was instantly alert. “That first one means exterior body changes. Right?”

  “Right,” the engineer acknowledged. “They’d be needed at the lower body side near the front door cut and rocker panel areas.”

  Brett looked gloomy, as well he might, Adam thought. It would require a crash redesign and testing program at a time when everyone believed the Orion design was fixed and final. He queried, “And the add-ons?”

  “We’ve experimented, and there’d be two pieces—a front floor reinforcement and a brace under the instrument panel.” The engineer described the brace which would be out of sight, extending from the cowl side structure on one side, to the steering column, thence to the cowl on the opposite side.