Wheels

by Arthur Hailey

  “Let’s hear the rest of it,” Brett urged. “Keep talking!” Coming back, listening to forthright student views again—views unencumbered by defeats, disillusion, too much knowledge of practicalities or financial limitations—was an emotional experience like having personal batteries charged.

  “A thing about the auto industry nowadays,” the swarthy student said, “is it’s tuned in to responsibility. Sometimes the critics won’t admit it, but it has. There’s a new feeling. Air pollution, safety, quality, all those things aren’t just talking subjects any more. Something’s being done, this time for real.”

  The others were still quiet. Several more students had joined the group; Brett guessed they were from other courses. Though a dozen art specialties beside automotive design were taught here, the subject of cars always evoked general interest within the school.

  “Well,” the same student continued, “the auto industry has some other responsibilities too. One of them is numbers.”

  It was curious, Brett thought, that at the airport earlier he had been thinking about numbers himself.

  “It’s the numbers that eat us up,” the soft-voiced, swarthy student said. “They undo every effort the car people make. Take safety. Safer cars are engineered and built, so what happens? More get on the road; accidents go up, not down. With air pollution it’s the same. Cars being made right now have the best engines ever, and they pollute less than any engine ever did before. There are even cleaner ones ahead. Right?”

  Brett nodded. “Right.”

  “But the numbers keep going up. We’re bragging now about producing ten million new cars a year, so no matter how good anybody gets at emission control, the total pollution gets worse. It’s wild!”

  “Supposing all that’s true, what’s the alternative? To ration cars?”

  Someone said, “Why not?”

  “Let me ask you something, Mr. DeLosanto,” the swarthy student said. “You ever been in Bermuda?”

  Brett shook his head.

  “It’s an island of twenty-one square miles. To make sure they keep room to move around, the Bermuda government does ration cars. First they limit engine capacity, body length and width. Then they allow only one car for every household.”

  A voice among the newcomers objected, “Nuts to that!”

  “I’m not saying we should be that strict,” the original speaker persisted. “I’m simply saying we ought to draw a line somewhere. And it isn’t as if the auto industry couldn’t stay healthy producing the same number of cars it does now, or that people couldn’t manage. They manage in Bermuda fine.”

  “If you tried it here,” Brett said, “you might have a new American Revolution. Besides, not being able to sell as many cars as people want to buy is an attack on free enterprise.” He grinned, offsetting his own words. “It’s heresy.”

  In Detroit, he knew, many would view the idea as heretical. But he wondered: Was it really? How much longer could the auto industry, at home and overseas, produce vehicles—with whatever kind of power plant—in continually increasing quantity? Wouldn’t someone, somewhere, somehow, have to rule, as Bermuda had done: Enough! Wasn’t the day approaching when a measure of control of numbers would become essential for the common good? Taxis were limited in number everywhere; so, to an extent, were trucks. Why not private cars? And if it didn’t happen, North America could consist eventually of one big traffic jam; at times it was close to that already. Therefore, wouldn’t auto industry leaders be wiser, more farsighted and responsible, if they took an initiative in self-restraint themselves?

  But he doubted if they would.

  A fresh voice cut in, “Not all of us feel the way Harvey does. Some think there’s room for lots more cars yet.”

  “And we figure to design a few.”

  “Damn right!”

  “Sorry, Harv! The world’s not ready for you.”

  But there were several murmurs of dissent, and it was obvious that the swarthy student, Harvey, had a following.

  The lanky blond youth who had declared earlier, “We’re nutty about cars,” called, “Tell us about the Orion.”

  “Get me a pad,” Brett said. “I’ll show you.”

  Someone passed one, and heads craned over while he sketched. He drew the Orion swiftly in profile and head-on view, knowing the lines of the car the way a sculptor knows a carving he has toiled on. There were appreciative “wows,” and “really great!”

  Questions followed. Brett answered frankly. When possible, design students were fed these privileged tidbits, like heady bait, to keep their interest high. However, Brett was careful to fold and pocket his drawings afterward.

  As students drifted back to classes, the courtyard session broke up. For the remainder of his time at the Art Center College of Design—through the same day and the next—Brett delivered a formal lecture, interviewed automotive design students individually, and critically appraised experimental car models which student teams had designed and built.

  An instinct among this crop of students, Brett discovered, was toward severity of design, allied with function and utility. Curiously, it had been a similar combination of ideas agreed to by Brett, Adam Trenton, Elroy Braithwaite and the others, on the memorable night, two and a half months earlier, when the initial concept for Farstar had emerged. Through the time he had already spent on early Farstar designs, still being labored over in a closely guarded studio at Detroit, and now here, Brett was struck by the aptness of Adam’s phrase: Ugly is Beautifull

  History showed that artistic trends—the latticework of all commercial designing—always began subtly and often when least expected. No one knew why artistic tastes changed, or how, or when the next development would come; it seemed simply that human virtuosity and perception were restless, ready to move on. Observing the students’ work now—ignoring a degree of naïveté and imperfection—and remembering his own designs of recent months, Brett felt an exhilaration at being part of an obviously fresh, emerging trend.

  Some of his enthusiasm, it seemed, transmitted itself to students whom he interviewed during his second day at the school. Following the interviews, Brett decided to recommend two potential graduates to the company Personnel and Organization staff for eventual hiring. One was the short, swarthy student, Harvey, who had argued forcefully in the courtyard; his design portfolio showed an ability and imagination well above average. Whichever auto company he worked for, Harvey was probably headed for trouble and collisions in Detroit. He was an original thinker, a maverick who would not be silenced, or dissuaded easily from strong opinions. Fortunately, while not always heeding mavericks, the auto industry encouraged them, knowing their value as a hedge against complacent thinking.

  Whatever happened, Brett suspected, Detroit and Harvey would find each other interesting.

  The other candidate he chose was the gangling youth with untidy blond hair whose talent, too, was obviously large. Brett’s suggestion of future employment, so the student said, was the second approach made to him. Another auto firm among the Big Three had already promised him a design job, if he wanted it, on graduation.

  “But if there’s any chance of working near you, Mr. DeLosanto,” the young man said, “I’ll go with your company for sure.”

  Brett was touched, and flattered, but uncertain how to answer.

  His uncertainty was based on a decision reached, alone in his Los Angeles hotel room, the previous night. It was now mid-August, and Brett had decided: at year end, unless something happened drastically to change his mind, he would quit the auto industry for good.

  On the way back East, by air, he made another decision: Barbara Zaleski would be the first to know.

  22

  Also in August—while Brett DeLosanto was in California—the Detroit assembly plant, where Matt Zaleski was assistant plant manager, was in a state of chaos.

  Two weeks earlier, production of cars had ceased. Specialist contractors had promply moved in, their assignment to dismantle the old assembly line an
d create a new one on which the Orion would be built.

  Four weeks had been allotted for the task. At the end of it, the first production Orion—Job One—would roll off the line, then, in the three or four weeks following, a backlog of cars would be created, ready to meet expected demands after official Orion introduction day in September. After that, if sales prognostications held, the tempo would increase, with Orions flowing from the plant in tens of thousands.

  Of the time allowed for plant conversion, two weeks remained and, as always at model changeover time, Matt Zaleski wondered if he would survive them.

  Most of the assembly plant’s normal labor force was either laid off or enjoying paid vacations, so that only a skeleton staff of hourly paid employees reported in each day. But far from the shutdown making the life of Matt Zaleski and others of the plant management group easier, work loads increased, anxieties multiplied, until an ordinary production day seemed, by comparison, an unruffled sea.

  The contractor’s staff, like an occupying army, was demanding. So were company headquarters engineers who were advising, assisting, and sometimes hindering the contractors.

  The plant manager, Val Reiskind, and Matt were caught in a crossfire of requests for information, hurried conferences, and orders, the latter usually requiring instant execution. Matt handled most matters which involved practical running of the plant, Reiskind being young and new. He had replaced the previous plant manager, McKernon, only a few months earlier and while the new man’s engineering and business diplomas were impressive, he lacked Matt’s seasoned know-how acquired during twenty years on the job. Despite Matt’s disappointment at failing to get McKernon’s job, and having a younger man brought in over him, he liked Reiskind who was smart enough to be aware of his own deficiency and treated Matt decently.

  Most headaches centered around new, sophisticated machine tools for assembly, which in theory worked well, but in practice often didn’t. Technically, it was the contractor who was responsible for making the whole system function, but Matt Zaleski knew that when contractor’s men were gone, he would inherit any inadequate situation they might leave. Therefore he stayed close to the action now.

  The greatest enemy of all was time. There was never enough to make a changeover work so smoothly that by preassigned completion date it could be said: “All systems go!” It was like building a house which was never ready on the day set for moving in, except that a house move could be postponed, whereas a car or truck production schedule seldom was.

  An unexpected development also added to Matt’s burdens. An inventory audit, before production of the previous year’s models ceased, had revealed stock shortages so huge as to touch off a major investigation. Losses from theft at any auto plant were always heavy. With thousands of workers changing shifts at the same time, it was a simple matter for thieves—either employees or walk-in intruders—to carry stolen items out.

  But this time a major theft ring was obviously at work. Among items missing were more than three hundred four-speed transmissions, hundreds of tires, as well as substantial quantities of radios, tape players, air conditioners, and other components.

  As an aftermath, the plant swarmed with security staff and outside detectives. Matt, though not remotely implicated, had been obliged to spend hours answering detectives’ questions about plant procedure. So far there appeared to be no break in the case, though the Chief of Security told Matt, “We have some ideas, and there are a few of your line workers we want to interrogate when they come back.” Meanwhile the detectives remained underfoot, their presence one more irritant at an arduous time.

  Despite everything, Matt had come through so far, except for a small incident concerning himself which fortunately went unnoticed by anyone important at the plant.

  He had been in his office the previous Saturday afternoon, seven-day work weeks being normal during model changeover, and one of the older secretaries, Iris Einfeld, who was also working, had brought him coffee. Matt began drinking it gratefully. Suddenly, for no reason he could determine, he was unable to control the cup and it fell from his hand, the coffee spilling over his clothing and the floor.

  Angry at himself for what he thought of as carelessness, Matt got up—then fell full length, heavily. Afterward, when he thought about it, it seemed as if his left leg failed him and he remembered, too, he had been holding the coffee in his left hand.

  Mrs. Einfeld, who was still in Matt’s office, had helped him back into his chair, then wanted to summon aid, but he dissuaded her. Instead, Matt sat for a while, and felt some of the feeling come back into his left leg and hand, though he knew he would not be able to drive home. Eventually, with some help from Iris Einfeld, he left the office by a back stairway and she drove him home in her car. On the way he persuaded her to keep quiet about the whole thing, being afraid that if word got around he would be treated as an invalid, the last thing he wanted.

  Once home, Matt managed to get to bed and stayed there until late Sunday when he felt much better, only occasionally being aware of a slight fluttering sensation in his chest. On Monday morning he was tired, but otherwise normal, and went to work.

  The weekend, though, had been lonely. His daughter, Barbara, was away somewhere and Matt Zaleski had had to fend for himself. In the old days, when his wife was alive, she had always helped him over humps like model changeover time with understanding, extra affection, and meals which—no matter how long she waited for him to come home—she prepared with special care. But it seemed so long since he had known any of those things that it was hard to remember Freda had been dead less than two years. Matt realized, sadly, that when she was alive he had not appreciated her half as much as he did now.

  He found himself, too, resenting Barbara’s preoccupation with her own life and work. Matt would have liked nothing more than to have Barbara remain at home, available whenever he came there, and thus filling—at least in part—her mother’s role. For a while after Freda’s death Barbara had seemed to do that. She prepared their meal each evening, which she and Matt ate together, but gradually Barbara’s outside interests revived, her work at the advertising agency increased, and nowadays they were rarely in the Royal Oak house together except to sleep, and occasionally for a hurried weekday breakfast. Months ago Barbara had urged that they seek a housekeeper, which they could well afford, but Matt resisted the idea. Now, with so much to do for himself, on top of pressures at the plant, he wished he had agreed.

  He had already told Barbara, early in August, that he had changed his mind and she could go ahead and hire a housekeeper after all, to which Barbara replied that she would do so when she could, but at the moment was too busy at the agency to take time out to advertise, interview, and get a housekeeper installed. Matt had bristled at that, believing it to be a woman’s business—even a daughter’s—to run a home, and that a man should not have to become involved, particularly when he was under stress, as Matt was now. Barbara made it clear, however, that she regarded her own work as equally important with her father’s, an attitude he could neither accept nor understand.

  There was a great deal else, nowadays, that Matt Zaleski failed to understand. He had only to open a newspaper to become alternately angry and bewildered at news of traditional standards set aside, old moralities discarded, established order undermined. No one, it seemed, respected anything any more—including constituted authority, the courts, law, parents, college presidents, the military, the free enterprise system, or the American flag, under which Matt and others of his generation fought and died in World War II.

  As Matt Zaleski saw it, it was the young who caused the trouble, and increasingly he hated most of them: those with long hair you couldn’t tell from girls (Matt still had a crewcut and wore it like a badge); student know-it-alls, choked up with book learning, spouting McLuhan, Marx, or Ché Guevara; militant blacks, demanding the millennium on the spot and not content to progress slowly; and all other protestors, rioters, contemptuous of everything in sight and beating up tho
se who dared to disagree. The whole bunch of them, in Matt’s view, were callow, immature, knowing nothing of real life, contributing nothing … When he thought of the young his bile and blood pressure rose together.

  And Barbara, while certainly no rebellious student or protestor, sympathized openly with most of what went on, which was almost as bad. For this, Matt blamed the people his daughter associated with, including Brett DeLosanto whom he continued to dislike.

  In reality, Matt Zaleski—like many in his age group—was the prisoner of his long-held views. In conversations which sometimes became heated arguments, Barbara had tried to persuade him to her own conviction: that a new breadth of outlook had developed, that beliefs and ideas once held immutable had been examined and found false; that what younger people despised was not the morality of their parents’ generation, but a façade of morality with duplicity behind; not old standards in themselves, but hypocrisy and self-deception which, all too often, the so-called standards shielded. In fact, it was a time of questing, of exciting intellectual experiment from which mankind could only gain.

  Barbara had failed in her attempts. Matt Zaleski, lacking insight, saw the changes around him merely as negative and destroying.

  In such a mood, as well as being tired and having a nagging stomach ache, Matt came home late to find Barbara and a guest already in the house. The guest was Rollie Knight.

  Earlier that evening, through arrangements made for her by Leonard Wingate, Barbara had met Rollie downtown. Her purpose was to acquire more knowledge about the life and experiences of black people—Rollie in particular—both in the inner city and with the hard core hiring program. A spoken commentary to accompany the documentary film Auto City, now approaching its final edited form, would be based, in part, on what she learned.

  To begin, she had taken Rollie to the Press Club, but the club had been unusually crowded and noisy; also, Rollie had not seemed at ease. So, on impulse, Barbara suggested driving to her home. They did.