A Man of Many Parts

Automobile carburetors have little in common with the visionary paintings of Paul Klee, but Arnold Maremont is a devoted connoisseur of both. Mare mont, 59, is president of Chicago's Maremont Corp., a leader in the greasy, $7 billion business of making spare parts for old cars. Yet he runs his firm from a low ebony coffee-table desk, surrounded by modern paintings and chairs by Mies van der Rohe, is as elegant and impeccably dressed as if he were managing Tiffany's. All this seems to help: he has built Maremont's sales from $30 million in 1959 to $122 million last year. Last week he capped a five-year diversification program by buying the Cal-Val Research & Development Corp., a California producer of giant shock absorbers and bomb-rack parts for the Air Force.

The Scheme. Until five years ago, Maremont Corp. was almost exclusively a maker of auto mufflers. Looking for broader fields, Arnold Maremont noted that the auto spare-parts business seemed to offer depression-proof growth. The number of cars on the road increases by at least 4,000,000 every year, and spare parts move even when new-car sales falter, because motorists must spend more to keep their old cars running. Maremont also noticed that Detroit auto companies supplied only 30% of the parts, while thousands of independents producing a jumble of reliable and unreliable products fought over the rest. His scheme: to acquire enough independents to make a full line of branded, guaranteed parts. With his program completed, Maremont now produces 8,000 parts for cars, is the biggest independent making a full line of products. At the same time, Arnold Maremont cast about into nonautomotive fields, picked up several basically sound companies in trouble and set them right. One problem acquisition: the Gabriel Co., a producer of auto shock absorbers and electronic gear, which took longer than expected to revamp, was largely responsible for slicing Maremont's 1963 earnings in half.

A Most Happy Fella. A product spread that puts Maremont into items ranging from tail pipes to microwave antennas might seem too diverse to manage, but it suits the wide-ranging interests of the company's president. In addition to running 87-year-old Maremont, which was founded by his father, he has interests in paper and in a maker of Christmas-tree balls, has backed a Broadway musical (The Most Happy Fella), and owns a chunk of the Saturday Review. His collection of modern art contains Dubuffet, Braque, Leger, Gris, Pollock, Arp and Kline, is valued at more than $2,000,000.

A political liberal, Maremont frequently throws himself into controversy. He was the first Illinois industrialist to back a law ending discrimination against hiring Negroes. Named chairman of the Illinois Public Aid Commission two years ago, he campaigned for publicly supported birth control for welfare families. After he had excoriated the state legislators in a TV interview, they passed a special law so that they could fire him. They did--but Maremont, undeterred, last week sandwiched speeches and interviews on birth control in among visits to his far-flung plants. Says he: "My role as a businessman is only one aspect of my total being."

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