External Combustion

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Lester Lum Colbert is a handsome, rugged Texan with a quick smile, a quicker tongue and a big hello for everyone. At 45, he is president of Chrysler Corp., the second largest automaker in the world. He never lets the size of his job bother him. He likes to turn to his pretty blonde wife and drawl: "Angel, can you remember when I've ever been kept awake by worrying?" Angel always shakes her head. Says Tex Colbert: "Business doesn't worry me. It's a downright pleasure!"

Last week, in the big Chrysler office building in Highland Park, Mich., Tex

Colbert was downright joyful. He gave a party for 450 newsmen and showed them his new 1951 models--Chryslers, Dodges, Plymouths, De Sotos; sedans, convertibles, hardtops and station wagons.

President Colbert (pronounced Cahl-bert) hustled everywhere, greeting swarms of acquaintances with rarely a slip on a first name, meeting new ones with a hearty handshake. When dinnertime came, he held a chrome tray overhead like a gong, whacked it with a spoon, and led the parade of guests to the dining room.

Push & Pull. There was plenty to beat a gong about. Chrysler had spent $50 million retooling for its new cars, and they contained the greatest batch of engineering changes in years.

Most important change was a new 180-horsepower engine, the most powerful automobile engine on the road, which Chrysler spent five years developing. (Next most powerful: Cadillac and Packard.) Chrysler described its new V-8 "FirePower" engine as "revolutionary"--and with reason. Though it has 33% more horsepower, the engine weighs 8% less than Chrysler's old eight-in-line engine. A high-compression engine (7.5 to 1), the Fire-Power nevertheless operates efficiently, and at a 10% saving, on regular grades of gas.

Other engineering changes: P:A new hydraulic steering mechanism, the "Hydraguide," which eliminates 80% of the pushing & pulling normally done by the driver, makes it possible to park at the curb with one finger on the wheel. P:New shock absorbers which take the bumps out of the roughest ride. P:Forced air cooling that cuts the wear & tear on brake linings. P:A peppy new torque converter transmission, as good as Buick's Dynaflow or Oldsmobile's Hydra-Matic.

This year, only the toplofty Chrysler Imperials ($3,080-$5,383) and New Yorkers ($2,756-$3,263) will have the 180-h.p. engine and optional Hydraguide steering. But, barring war, Chrysler expects to spread the improvements (including the engine, but smaller and with less horsepower) to all its cars.

On the outside the cars were changed, too. On all models, last year's boxy body has been rounded, window space has been increased, as has headroom and seat room, although the overall length of some models has been slightly cut. The De Soto has a more powerful 116-h.p. engine (v. 112-h.p. last year). Dodge and Plymouth have heavier grilles and bumpers. All interiors have new fabrics-and design.

With the new cars already coming off the production lines, Chrysler expects to make 300,000 in the first three months of this year, 280,000 more than in last year's strike-riddled quarter.

"The Most Difficult Problem." Hardly had Chrysler announced this peacetime goal when the Army abruptly bugled for attention. It gave Chrysler another goal--for war. Chrysler got a $99 million contract to build the nation's first heavy tanks since World War II.

The Acmy wrapped details in secrecy, but estimates were that the newly designed T-43 tanks would weigh up to 60 tons, be able to withstand the deadliest known antitank weapons. The T-43's own guns are automatically directed and controlled. Said Brigadier General David J. Crawford, boss of the Army's tank program: "They should outslug any land fighting machine ever produced." Since Chrysler already had a contract for a new 45-ton medium tank (TIME, Jan. 15), the new contract brought the corporation's total tank orders to $259 million, and total arms orders to more than $500 million. Chrysler, which, outside of the Army, was the biggest U.S. tankmaker in World War II (25,507 produced), looked as if it were destined to become the biggest private tankmaker once again,

To do the tank job, Chrysler will build a new plant at Newark, Del., close to one of its parts plants there, and accessible to the Philadelphia labor market. Reason for the new building: no available plant is strong enough to support the overhead cranes as they swing the heavy tanks down the assembly line. Nevertheless, new plant and all, Chrysler expects to be producing tanks by fall. Said General Crawford: "This is the most difficult problem ever given private industry."

To power the tanks, Chrysler last week got a war order for $100 million worth of Continental-designed engines. It will make them in New Orleans' huge Higgins, Inc. (boats) plant. For another big war order--Pratt & Whitney J-4,8 Turbo-Wasp jet engines for Navy fighters--Chrysler will have to build another plant. Because cutbacks in auto production, brought on by material shortages, have already thrown thousands of workers out of their jobs in Detroit, Chrysler would build the plant near Detroit and put some of the idle hands to work. Chrysler was already producing special Army trucks, only six months after getting a $92 million order.

In most ways, Chrysler Corp. was in better shape than ever before to handle its multiple burdens of peace & war. Working capital has increased more than 15-fold (to $375 million) in the company's 25 years; net worth has soared from $37 million to more than $509 million; capacity was increased 33% since World War II (and is being boosted another 30%). Despite a three-month strike last year, the company turned out 1,385,000 cars and trucks in nine months--more than any other full year's output. Earnings hit a new peak (an estimated $150 million v. 1949's $132 million).

But in one important respect, Chrysler looked weaker. Within three years, no fewer than eight members of its top echelon--the men who made Chrysler what it is today--will retire. Their departure will mark the end of the second generation of the auto industry.

Most of them came in with Walter Percy Chrysler, the comet of the industry. Kansas-born Walter Chrysler started as a 5-c--an-hour locomotive wiper, rose through the shops, went to Buick, and became a $500,000-a-year boss. Chrysler retired at 45, was lured out of retirement (at $40,000 a month) to put Willys-Overland on its feet, later took over the debt-ridden Maxwell Motor Co. Inc. In 1924 he brought out the first Chrysler, a slick engineering job whose high-compression engine and jackrabbit pickup immediately caught the public's fancy. Result: in 1925, Chrysler Corp. replaced Maxwell.

When President Chrysler, burned out by his own scorching working pace, stepped up to chairman in 1935, he was succeeded by husky Kaufman Thuma Keller, who, like Chrysler, was a crack machinist. When Keller moved up to board chairman 2^ months ago and Colbert became president (at an estimated $250,000 a year), it was a complete break with Chrysler's engineering tradition. No specialist, but a general practitioner in every phase of the business, Tex Colbert is a lawyer-turned-automan. He is the man who, somehow, has to find as good a management team as the one he is losing.

Clean Desk, Dirty Hands. A big (6 ft. 1 in., 190 Ibs.), external-combustion type of Texan, brown-haired, blue-eyed Tex Colbert is a clean-desk executive who is not afraid to get his hands dirty in the shop. He is up at 6:50 every weekday morning, breakfasts on orange juice and coffee, drives the 17 miles to work in his Dodge. In his moderate-sized office at Chrysler's Highland Park plant, he whips through the day's mail, then sets out on a round of whirlwind conferences and inspections. Every other Monday, he presides over the weekly meeting of Chrysler's Operations Committee, top policy group of the corporation; every second Wednesday of the month, the vice presidents meet in his office. On other days the Colbert door is open to a stream of dealers, engineers and production men. Drawls Tex: "I like to see a man face-to-face. I'm no memo writer."

To keep his waistline trim, Colbert eats a light lunch (soup, salad and Jello) in the executives' dining room at Highland Park; there, as at home, any talk of business is taboo. Hardly a day goes by that Colbert does not dash across town to the Dodge plant, whose presidency he still holds, in addition to bossing the corporation. There he keeps a finger in everything from production to sales, says confidently: "If you develop the facts, the problems will solve themselves."

Once having settled a problem, Colbert rarely gives it a second thought. He gets through all his work at the office, takes none home with him nights. He owns a briefcase, but seldom uses it.

"A Ball of Fire." On the road, where he has spent much time, Colbert carries all the facts he needs in his head. In the past five years he has crisscrossed the country on scores of trips, met nearly all of Dodge's 4,142 dealers. Dealers grow lyrical about this direct approach, talk about Colbert almost exclusively in ad writers' superlatives. Sample quotes: "A ball of fire . . ." "A very human sonofagun . . ." "A two-fisted operator . . ." "A good old Texan . . ."

Colbert is an unwearying inspector. After a quick look in the parts department at one place, he guessed the value of the inventory--and hit it right on the nose ($55,000). He pokes into every nook & cranny, even inspects the mechanics' benches and the rest rooms, keeps an ear cocked for the smallest gripe.

Colbert plays with the same competitive gusto. On the golf course, where he shoots from 85 to 100), he needles his opponent constantly, will do almost anything to win a nickel or a dollar on a hole. His favorite crack when an opponent's putt rolls beyond the pin: "Well, nothing rolls like a ball!" He likes to drink and loves to talk--so much so that when his car ran into a snowbank recently, his twelve-year-old son cried: "Come on, everyone, and push. The Big Wind's stuck again!"

The Colberts live in a comfortable, 13-room fieldstone house outside Detroit, in suburban Bloomfield Hills, and Tex spends many an evening over schoolwork with his three children: Nicholas, 12, Sarah, 14, and Lester Lum Jr., 16.

He reads little besides papers and magazines; in his moderately stocked library the most worn books are Cattle Empire, Golf--A New. Approach, You Can Talk Well, and The Story of Texas. "He's too full of nervous energy to sit and read," says Angel. "He's just got to be doing something." Rain or shine, Colbert takes a long walk every night before he goes to bed--a habit he picked up from K. T. Keller. Says he: "Somehow, when I'm walking, my mind clears. A lot of problems I've had during the day seem to fall into place."

Infant Hustler. Colbert was born in 1905 in sleepy little Oakwood, Texas (pop. 1,000), the only son (and third child) of a well-to-do cotton farmer and a former schoolteacher. While in grade school, young Colbert jerked sodas in the local drugstore (said his boss: "The only trouble I have with Lester is keeping him from working himself to death"), later organized a group of friends to help him run a laundry route through town.

At twelve, his father gave him an old Ford jalopy; Tom Sawyer fashion, he got his friends to work on it when it needed repairs. At 13, his father taught him how to trade cotton and make money at it. At 15 he had a girl friend, Daisy Gorman (he called her "Angel"), and announced that some day he would marry her (he did). At 19 he was graduated from the University of Texas. By then, he had made enough money trading cotton (about $5,000) to go to Harvard Law School.

High Jinks, Low Marks. In Cambridge, Colbert was better known for high jinks than high marks. Once, so the story goes, while firemen were extinguishing a small dormitory blaze, he hopped on the fire engine and drove off with bells clanging. Another time, after a late party, he went to class in his dress suit (with a turtleneck sweater substituted for the coat). The professor was discussing a hypothetical charge of adultery--and what was Mr. Colbert's verdict? Sleepy Tex had not heard the evidence, but as usual had an answer: "This man must be judged guilty. Despite lack of knowledge of an overt act, circumstances under which the accused was discovered indicated that if he didn't commit the act, he should have."

The result was that in 1929, when Colbert knocked on the door of Manhattan's law firm, Larkin, Rathbone & Perry, the interviewer described him as "a personable young man with no recommendation from the Dean." Nevertheless, Colbert's bounce, flair and talk caught the fancy of Partner Nicholas Kelley, a Chrysler vice president, director and legal adviser. Kelley hired him as a law clerk at $2,100 a year--less than a single summer's earnings on the cotton market.

Soon Tex caught an even more important eye--Walter Chrysler's. Colbert helped Chrysler's son-in-law Edgar Garbisch (the famed West Point center and dropkicker) organize Tish Inc. (paper handkerchiefs). Colbert did such a good job that when Chrysler wanted Nick Kelley to open an office in Chrysler's Detroit headquarters, Colbert was the natural choice for the job.

"What Next?" In Detroit, where the long war between unions and management was just beginning, Colbert soon became the corporation's expert on labor law. In 1935, when he was only 30, he was made a vice president and director of the Dodge division. It was then that President K. T. Keller took him under his wing and began to train him for a bigger job.

As Keller's staff man, Colbert would finish one job and say: "What next, Mr. Keller?'; Keller sent him into the plants to handle production problems firsthand, to night school to learn how to read a blueprint and run a lathe. Says Colbert: "I decided that this was much more to the cut of my jib than practicing law."

When war came, Colbert got his first big chance to prove his mettle, show what production tricks he had learned. He went to Washington one morning, returned to Detroit the same day with the green light to build one of the biggest plants in the world at Chicago and make B-29 engines (Wright Cyclone). Colbert was made second in command of the Chicago project; when his boss, William O'Neil, took sick a few months later, Colbert took over.

When the mud on the 500-acre site got so deep that supervisors could hardly walk or drive around, Colbert had a typical Texas solution: hire 25 horses from a local riding academy. When morale sagged in the long months of endless construction and production problems, Colbert said to his staff: "If I hear anyone here say this plant won't be built,' this engine won't run, this ship won't fly, or this plane won't win the war, I'm going to ask for his resignation immediately." When an assembly line slowed down, Colbert would hop on a motor scooter and dash to the scene of the trouble. Finally, the first engine came off the line and began its loo-hour test run. After 70 hours, the engine blew up; a tiny oil hole had not been drilled all the way through. But the next engine tested perfectly.

By war's end, the Dodge-operated plant had turned out 18,413 engines, cut the cost to the Army by more than one-half (from $26,000 to $12,000 apiece), and kept ahead of schedule every month, despite some 6,274 design changes. Wrote General "Hap" Arnold: "You accomplished what seemed to be the impossible."

In 1946 Colbert was made president of Dodge, the biggest division in Chrysler Corp. One of the first things he did was to expand. In two years he boosted output to an average of 2,800 cars and trucks a day (v. 1,700 prewar), and proved to the satisfaction of K. T. Keller that he had learned his lessons well.

Exeunt the Brass. Now he has to start passing the lessons on to a new team. Next month the retirements in the top brass will begin. First to go will be Vice Chairman of the Board Fred M. Zeder and Director of Engineering Owen R. Skelton. These two, with Carl Breer (already retired), have designed every Chrysler auto ever made. Next will be Plymouth's President Dan S. Eddins, Chrysler Division Boss David Wallace and Dodge's Works Manager Fred J. Lamborn--all longtime Chrysler hands. With them will go Colbert's right arm--General Manager Herman L. Weckler. In two years, both B. E. Hutchinson, chairman of the Finance Committee, and Treasurer Horace A. Davies will start drawing pensions. Says Colbert: "Don't worry. We'll have plenty of able replacements." Among them:

ROBERT KELLER, 38, square-shouldered, stocky son of K.T., who has been named general manager of Chrysler's new tank plant in Delaware. Before putting on a white collar, Bob Keller put in four years on the bench and became, according to his father, "a damned fine mechanic." He was wartime works manager of Chrysler's Detroit tank arsenal, moved into the corporation's nonautomotive divisions-at war's end, became president of the Marine and Industrial Engine Division in 1948.

WILLIAM C. NEWBERG, 40, husky, dark-haired vice president of Dodge, who is already being tutored for the division presidency. A University of Washington engineering graduate (1933), Bill Newberg wrote a thesis on road-testing autos that landed him a job with Chrysler, worked with Colbert in Chicago during the war, and went on with him to Dodge.

JOHN EDWARD BRENNAN, 38, tall, thin University of Wisconsin graduate (1934), who is reportedly slated for a big Chrysler defense job. Brennan took his M.A. at Chrysler's own Engineering Institute, worked on the Bofors 40-mm. gun, which Chrysler made during the war, is now Dodge resident engineer.

GEORGE W. TROOST, 48, vice president and comptroller, who is most likely to become treasurer of the corporation when Hutchinson retires. From the University of Michigan (1924), Troost went to accountants Ernst & Ernst, to Chrysler 14 years ago.

On the Shelf. President Colbert has more than staff problems to worry about. In case of all-out war, auto output would stop and competition would be on the shelf. But now Colbert must mobilize on two fronts: while he is forming and arming new work platoons for war, he must maintain an experienced cadre at home to keep Chrysler's place in the civilian market. Recently, this position has slipped. Between 1946 and 1949, G.M.'s percentage of the auto market rose from 37.8% to 42.9%; Chrysler's, on the other hand, shrank from 25.7% to 21.4%. And last year, because of its three-month strike, Chrysler's sales dropped behind Ford for the first time since 1936. (Last week Chrysler was back in second place again, with a daily output of 6,600 units, v. G.M.'s 14,300 and Ford's 6,550.)

The reasons for this downward trend lay in corporation tradition. From the beginning, Chrysler has always put engineering first (said K.T. Keller: "If your product's lousy, you better quit"). Chrysler was the first to introduce four-wheel hydraulic brakes, the all-steel body, fluid drive and dozens of other mechanical advances. But for years, Chrysler has been cautious in styling. Its disastrous sales experience with the Airflow of 1934, which was too advanced for car buyers, has made it wary ever since of getting ahead of the style parade. The result has been that until this year, it has been way behind.

Furthermore, unlike G.M. and Ford, Chrysler made no attempt in its press and public relations to humanize the corporation, and turn public good will into sales. Newsmen used to say that its press relations (which Chrysler long considered a one-man job) were guided by the principle of "Treat 'em rough and tell 'em nothing."

This same principle has cropped up in union relations, and the union has often capitalized on it. Under President Colbert, the corporation is changing its policy, bringing itself Up to date with other big corporations. It was with these human problems in mind that Chrysler decided last summer to offer the union a wage increase that it had not even demanded (TIME, Sept. 4). And it was for the same reason that Tex Colbert was picked to make the offer.

As president, Colbert has already made his influence felt in the fields of public and labor relations, and both have improved a great deal.

With shortage days ahead, most automen expect to sell all the cars they can make for some time--and Chrysler is no exception. But Chrysler is looking ahead to the time when there will be hot competition again and it will need every trick to compete against G.M. and Ford. Meanwhile, Colbert thinks that a better understanding between management and union will also help to produce any new war orders that may come along. Says Colbert: "If we must stop auto production completely at some future date--a prospect that does not seem likely now--we're ready for that, too."

*-To get more power -- and cut down on energy-wasting cylinder-head deposits -- the FirePower's combustion chambers are rounded at the top, and sparkplugs placed smack in the middle, in stead of off to one side as in most conventional auto engines. -Manhattan's Russeks store last week advertised the "Dodge '51 Motor Coat" for women, made of the same fabric--"a coat to match your car interior." Biggest tank producer: the Army's arsenal in Detroit, built and run by Chrysler during World War II. -Which include Airtemp refrigeration, marine and industrial engines, and Oilite (powdered metal) bearings.

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