End of a Cliffhanger

Because of its practice of bringing out each year's models in the preceding fall, the auto industry usually has clues long before January about how well or badly the new year will treat it. But last fall's automobile strikes distorted customary sales patterns, first cutting sales badly, then pushing them unrealistically high in December, when over time production helped fill a huge order backlog. To Detroit, January became the vital, cliffhanging month to watch.

Last week the January results came in. Although still somewhat inflated by backlog orders, auto sales were so extraordinarily good that 1965 promises to be another record auto year.

Correcting the Boss. U.S. automakers sold 693,323 passenger cars in January, fully 21% more than the January record set last year (see chart). The statistics were so impressive--Detroit greeted them almost in disbelief--that Lee lacocca, Ford's new group vice president, had to correct a prediction made only last December by his boss. Henry Ford II. "Business is fantastic," said lacocca. "We could well be looking at a 9,000,000-car year in 1965, including 500,000 imports. It could be that Mr. Ford will look like a bear with his 8,700,000 figure."

January's sales figures, relatively free from strike-caused distortions, also gave Detroit its first meaningful projection of the share each company and its cars will capture in the 1965 auto market. Chrysler chalked up the biggest market gain over January 1964, rising from 12.7% to 14.4%, and Ford increased its share from 26.2% to 27.4% . These gains were made at the expense of G.M., whose share fell slightly from 54.5% to 54.1%, and little American Motors, which dropped from 5.6% to 4% . A.M.C.'s hopes for increasing its share were buoyed slightly this week by the introduction of its racy fastback Marlin.

New Niche. Among the industry's 33 name plates, the most spectacular performer in January was Ford's sporty Mustang, which carved out 5.1% of the market although it was introduced only last April. Another newcomer, Chrysler's fastback Barracuda, established a 0.6% niche for itself. Plymouth made an impressive improvement over its January 1964 market share, adding; 1.5%. Buick won an additional 0.8%, Tempest and Chrysler 0.6% each, standard Ford 0.5% and Mercury 0.4% --all at the expense of the compacts and the cars with only modest styling changes, which continued to be the biggest losers. Because the auto sales total is so great, the percentage shifts only appear to be small: actually, every extra percentage point will be worth more than $200 million in annual sales.

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