BIGGER COKES will soon be test-marketed by Coca-Cola to meet increasing competition from other soft-drink makers. Coca-Cola, which has stuck to its 6-oz. bottle for more than 50 years, wants to make a bigger play for the family market with 12-oz. bottles (or larger), will also try out an intermediate 8-oz. size.

GENERAL MOTORS, which just announced a $107 million expansion program to double auto production in England and the Benelux nations (TIME, Oct. 4), will spend another $71 million in Germany. The money, said G.M.'s touring President Harlow Curtice, will be used to increase output of the Opel works from 165,000 to 250,000 cars and trucks annually.

TUBELESS TIRES will be standard equipment on most 1955 autos (including all five Chrysler lines). Goodyear tire production is now 50% tubeless, Firestone 60%, Goodrich 75%, and U.S. Rubber expects to be 50% tubeless by Jan. 1. Chief advantages of tubeless tires: they wear longer, have fewer flats, make steering easier.

WESTERN AIR LINES, which has climbed from near bankruptcy in 1947 to a solid ranking as the tenth biggest U.S. airline, has just completed an $11 million expansion program. Western has bought eight Douglas DC-6Bs, will put them on its luxury flights (filet mignon, champagne, orchids) along the West Coast and to the Twin Cities in hopes of adding another 50 million passenger revenue miles (1954 total: an estimated 407 million).

COLOR TV-MAKERS will increase production in 1955 to 25% of all TV sales, for a retail volume of $375 million.

GAS DISCOVERY in Wise County, Texas is turning into a bonanza. Developers, including Millionaire Houston Oilman R. E. ("Bob") Smith (TIME, May 24), have just signed a $100 million gas sale contract with the Natural Gas Pipeline Co., which will build a 280-mile line from the field to Pampa. There it will connect with the company's pipeline carrying gas northward to Midwest markets.

CHRYSLER, which lost a big chunk of its defense business when General Motors took over as sole supplier of Patton M48 medium tanks last year, will soon be back in medium-tank production. By underbidding G.M., Chrysler won a new $160,600,000 Army contract for 1,800 Pattons to be produced at its Newark, Del. plant, has also landed a $22 million contract for experimental work on the Army's secret "Redstone" ground-to-ground guided missile.

NUCLEAR REACTOR, the first for purely industrial research, will be built by Chicago's Armour Research Foundation. To cost $500,000 the reactor will be ready in a year, will be used to experiment in such fields as medical diagnosis, food-sterilization, plastic, glass and rubber products.

MEXICAN SULPHUR will soon be flowing to world markets in quantity. Pan American Sulphur Co., biggest of three U.S. firms developing a huge sulphur discovery on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, has just completed a $7,000,000 plant, which will swing into full production next month at a capacity of 800,000 tons yearly. Pan American's proven sulphur reserve: 30 million tons.

ADMINISTRATION BATTLE between the Labor and Commerce Departments is building up over Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks's proposal to put labor unions under the antitrust laws. Labor Secretary James Mitchell, who is opposed, has come out on top, so far, in a running battle over other issues, e.g., knocking down a Commerce proposal to divert copper from the strategic stockpile to the strike-bound copper industry (on the ground that it was strike-breaking).

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