Wheels

"Sure did."

"You can take my car." He reached in his pocket for keys. "If you'll phone my secretary tomorrow, tell her where it is, she'll have it picked up."

Pierre hesitated. "Thanks, but Erica said . ."

Erica bustled into the living room, pulling a light car coat over her pajamas. "I'll drive Pierre home."

Adam started to say, "There's no need"

"It's a nice night," she insisted. "And I feel like some air."

Moments later, outside, car doors slammed, an engine revved and receded. The house was silent.

Adam worked a half hour more, then went upstairs. He was climbing into bed when he heard the car return and Erica come in, but was asleep by the time she reached the bedroom.

He dreamed of Rowena.

Erica dreamed of Pierre.

Chapter 17

A belief among automobile product planners is that the most successful ideas for new cars are conceived suddenly, like unannounced star shell bursts, during informal, feet-on-desk bull sessions in the dead of night.

There are precedents proving this true. Ford's Mustang - most startling Detroit trend setter after World War II, and forerunner to an entire generation of Ford, GM, Chrysler, and American Motors products afterward - had its origins that way, and so, less spectacularly, have others. This is the reason why product teams sometimes linger in offices when others are abed, letting their smoke and conversation drift, and hoping - like proficient Cinderellas - that magic in some form will touch their minds.

On a night in early June - two weeks after Hank Kreisel's cottage party - Adam Trenton and Brett DeLosanto nurtured the same kind of wish.

Because the Orion, also, was begun at night, they and others hoped that a muse for Farstar - next major project ahead - might be wooed the same way.

Over several months past, innumerable think sessions had been held - some involving large groups, others small, and still more composed of duos like Adam and Brett - but from none of them yet had anything emerged to confirm a direction which must be decided on soon. The basement block work (as Brett DeLosanto called it) had been done. Projection papers were assembled which asked and answered, more or less: Where are we today? Who's selling to whom? What are we doing right? Wrong? What do people think they want in a car? What do they really want? Where will they, and we, be five years from now? Politically? Socially? Intellectually? Sexually? What'll populations be? Tastes? Fashions? What new issues, controversies, will evolve? How will age groups shape up? And who'll be rich? Poor? In between? Where?

Why? All these, and a myriad other questions, facts, statistics, had sped in and out of computers. Now what was needed was something no computer could simulate: a gut feeling, a hunch, a shaft of insight, a touch of genius.

One problem was: to determine the shape of Farstar, they ought to know how Orion would fare. But the Orion's introduction was still four months away; even then, its impact could not be judged fully until half a year after that. So what the planners must do was what the auto industry had always done because of long lead times required for new models - guess.

Tonight's session, for Adam and Brett, began in the company teardown room.

The teardown room was more than a room; it was a department occupying a closely guarded building - a storehouse of secrets which few outsiders penetrated. Those who did, however, found it a source of unwaveringly honest information, for the teardown room's function was to dissect company products and competitors', then compare them objectively with each other. All big three auto companies had teardown rooms of their own, or comparable systems.

In the teardown environment, if a competitor's car or component was sturdier, lighter, more economical, assembled better, or superior in any other way, the analysts said so. No local loyalties ever swayed a judgment.

Company engineers and designers who had boobed were sometimes embarrassed by teardown room revelations, though they would be even more embarrassed if word leaked out to press or public. It rarely did. Nor did other companies release adverse reports about defects in competitors' cars; they knew it was a tactic which could boomerang tomorrow. In any case, objectives of the teardown room were positive - to police the company's products and designs, and to learn from others.

Adam and Brett had come to study three small cars in their torndown state - the company's own minicompact, a Volkswagen, and another minicar, Japanese.

A technician, working late at Adam's request, admitted them through locked outer doors to a lighted lobby, then through more doors to a large high-ceilinged room, lined with recessed racks extending from floor to ceiling.

"Sorry to spoil your evening, Neil," Adam said. "We couldn't make it sooner."

"No sweat, Mr. Trenton. I'm on overtime." The elderly technician, a skilled mechanic who had once worked on assembly lines and now helped take cars apart, led the way to a section of racks, some of which had been pulled out. "Everything's ready that you asked for."

Brett DeLosanto looked around him. Though he had been here many times before, the teardown operation never failed to fascinate him.

The department bought cars the way the public did - through dealers.

Purchases were in names of individuals, so no dealer ever knew a car that he was selling was for detailed study instead of normal use. The precaution ensured that all cars received were routine production models.

As soon as a car arrived, it was driven to the basement and taken apart.

This did not mean merely separating the car's components, but involved total disassembly. As it was done, each item was numbered, listed, described, its weight recorded. Oily, greasy parts were cleaned.

It took four men between ten days and two weeks to reduce a normal car to ordered fragments, mounted on display boards.

A story - no one really knew how true - was sometimes told about a teardown crew which, as a practical joke, worked in spare time to disassemble a car belonging to one of their number who was holidaying in Europe. When the vacationer returned, the car was in his garage, undamaged, but in several thousand separate parts. He was a competent mechanic who had learned a good deal as a teardown man, and he determinedly put it together again. It took a year.

Techniques of total disassembly were so specialized that unique tools had been devised - some like a plumber's nightmare.

The display boards containing the torn-down vehicles were housed in sliding racks. Thus, like dissected corpses, the industry's current cars were available for private viewing and comparison.

A company engineer might be brought here and told: "Look at the competition's headlamp cans! They're an integrated part of the radiator support instead of separate, complex pieces. Their method is cheaper and better. Let's get with it!"

It was called value engineering, and it saved money because each single cent of cost lopped from a car design represented thousands of dollars in eventual profit. Once, during the 1960s, Ford saved a mammoth twenty-five cents per car by changing its brake system master cylinder, after studying the master cylinder of General Motors.

Others, like Adam and Brett at this moment, did their viewing to keep abreast of design changes and to seek inspiration.

The Volkswagen on the display boards which the technician had pulled out had been a new one. He reported, with a touch of glumness, "Been taking VWs apart for years. Every damn time it's the same - quality good as ever."

Brett nodded agreement. "Wish we could say the same of ours."

"So do!, Mr. DeLosanto. But we can't. Leastways, not here."

At the display boards showing the company's own minicompact, the custodian said, "Mind you, ours has come out pretty well this time. If it wasn't for that German bug, we'd look good."

"That's because American small car assembly's getting more automated," Adam commented. "The Vega started a big change with the new Lordstown plant. And the more automation we have, with fewer people, the higher everybody's quality will go."

"Wherever it's going," the technician said, "it ain't gone to Japan - at least not to the plant that produced this clunker. For God's sake, Mr. Trenton! Look at that!"

They examined some of the parts of the Japanese import, the third car they had come to review.

"String and baling wire," Brett pronounced.

"I'll tell you one thing, sir. I wouldn't want anybody I cared about to be riding around in one of those. It's a motorbike on four wheels, and a poor one at that."

They remained at the teardown racks, studying the three cars in detail.

Later, the elderly technician let them out.

At the doorway he asked, "What's coming up next, gentleman? For us, I mean."

"Glad you reminded me," Brett said. "We came over here to ask you."

***

It would be some kind of small car; that much they all knew. The key question was: What kind?

Later, back at staff headquarters, Adam observed, "For a long time, right up to 1970, a lot of people in this business thought the small car was a fad."

"I was one," Elroy Braithwaite, the Product Development vice-president admitted. The Silver Fox had joined them shortly after Adam's and Brett's return from the teardown room. Now, a group of five - Adam, Brett, Braithwaite, two others from product planning staff - was sprawled around Adam's office suite, ostensibly doing little more than shoot the breeze, but in reality hoping, through channeled conversation, to awaken ideas in each other. Discarded coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays littered tables and window ledges. It was after midnight.