"How can you be sure?"
"Simple. If Joe wants just reliable transportation - as a good many of his kind say they do - all he needs is the cheapest, simplest, stripped economy job in the Chev, Ford, or Plymouth line. Most, though, want more than that - a better car because, like a sexy-looking babe on the arm, or a fancy home, it gives a good warm feeling in the gut. Nothing wrong with that! But Joe and his friends seem to think there is, which is why they fool themselves."
"So consumer research"
"Is for the birds! Okay, we send out some dame with a clipboard who asks a guy coming down the street what he wants in his next car. Right away he thinks he'll impress her, so he lists all the square stuff like reliability, gas mileage, safety, trade-in value. If it's a written quiz, unsigned, he does it so he impresses himself. Down at the bottom, both times, he may put appearance, if he mentions it at all. Yet, when it comes to buy-time and the same guy's in a showroom, whether he admits it or not, appearance will be right there on top."
Brett stood, and stretched. "You'll find some who'll tell you that the public's love affair with cars is over. Nuts! We'll all be around for a while, kids, because old Joe C., with his hangups, is still a designer's friend."
He glanced at his watch; there was another half hour until he would meet Adam Trenton en route to the proving ground, which left time to stop at Color and Interiors.
On their way out of the dining room, Brett asked the students, "What do you make of it all?"
The curiosity was genuine. What the two students were doing now, Brett had done himself not many years ago. Auto companies regularly invited design school students in, treating them like VIPs, while the students saw for themselves the kind of aura they might work in later. The auto makers, too, courted students at their schools. Teams from the Big Three visited design colleges several times a year, openly competing for the most promising soon-to-be graduates, and the same was true of other industry areas - engineering, science, finance, merchandising, law - so that auto companies with their lavish pay scales and benefits, including planned promotion, skimmed off a high proportion of the finer talents.
Some including thoughtful people in the industry itself - argued that the process was unjust, that auto makers corralled too much of the world's best brainpower, to the detriment of civilization generally, which needed more thinkers to solve urgent, complex human problems. Just the same, no other agency or industry succeeded in recruiting a comparable, constant flow of top-flight achievers. Brett DeLosanto had been one.
"It's exciting," the bright-eyed girl said, answering Brett's question.
"Like being in on creation, the real thing. A bit scary, of course. All those other people to compete with, and you know how good they must be. But if you make it here, you've really made it big."
She had the attitude it took, Brett thought. All she needed was the talent, plus some extra push to overcome the industry's prejudice against women who wanted to be more than secretaries.
He asked the youth, "How about you?"
The pensive young man shook his head uncertainly. He was frowning. "I'm not sure. Okay, everything's big time, there's plenty of bread thrown around, a lot of effort, and I guess it's exciting all right"- he nodded toward the girl - "just the way she said. I keep wondering, though: Is it all worth it? Maybe I'm crazy, and I know it's late; I mean, having done the design course and all, or most of it. But you can't help asking: For an artist, does it matter? Is it what you want to give blood to, a lifetime?"
"You have to love cars to work here," Brett said. "You have to care about them so much that they're the most important thing there is. You breathe, eat, sleep cars, sometimes remember them when you're making love. You wake up in the night, it's cars you think about - those you're designing, others you'd like to. It's like a religion." He added curtly, "If you don't feel that way, you don't belong here."
"I do love cars," the youth said. "I always have, as long as I remember, in just the way you said. It's only lately . . ." He left the sentence hanging, as if unwilling to voice heresy a second time.
Brett made no other comment. Opinions, appraisals of that kind were individual, and decisions because of them, personal. No one else could help because in the end it all depended on your own ideas, values, and sometimes conscience. Besides, there was another factor which Brett had no intention of discussing with these two: Lately he had experienced some of the same questioning and doubts himself.
***
The chief of Color and Interiors had a skeleton immediately inside his office, used for anatomy studies in relation to auto seating. The skeleton hung slightly off the ground, suspended by a chain attached to a plate in the skull. Brett DeLosanto shook hands with it as he came in. "Good morning, Ralph."
Dave Heberstein came from behind his desk and nodded toward the main studio. "Let's go through." He patted the skeleton affectionately in passing. "A loyal and useful staff member who never criticizes, never asks for a raise."
The Color Center, which they entered, was a vast, domed chamber, circular and constructed principally of glass, allowing daylight to flood in. The overhead dome gave a cathedral effect, so that several enclosed booths for light-controlled viewing of color samples and fabrics - appeared like chapels. Deep carpeting underfoot deadened sound. Throughout the room were display boards, soft and hard trim samples, and a color library comprising every color in the spectrum as well as thousands of subcolors.
Heberstein stopped at a display table. He told Brett DeLosanto, "Here's what I wanted you to see."
Under glass, a half-dozen upholstery samples had been arranged, each identified by mill and purchase number. Other similar samples were loose on the table top. Though variously colored, they bore the generic name "Metallic Willow." Dave Heberstein picked one up. "Remember these?"
"Sure " Brett nodded. "I liked them, still do."
"I did, too. In fact, I recommended them for use." Heberstein fingered the sample which was pleasantly soft to the touch. It had - as had all the others - an attractive patterned silver fleck. "It's crimped yarn with a metallic thread."
Both men were aware that the fabric had been introduced as an extra cost option with the company's top line models this year. It had proven popular and soon, in differing colors, would be available for the Orion.
Brett asked, "So what's the fuss?"
"Letters," Heberstein said. "Customers' letters which started coming in a couple of weeks ago." He took a key ring from his pocket and opened a drawer in the display table. Inside was a file containing about two dozen photocopied letters. "Read a few of those."
The correspondence, which was mainly from women or their husbands, though a few lawyers had written on behalf of clients, had a common theme. The women had sat in their cars wearing mink coats. In each case when they left the car, part of the mink had adhered to the seat, depleting and damaging the coat. Brett whistled softly.
"Sales ran a check through the computer," Heberstein confided. "In every case the car concerned had Metallic Willow seats. I understand there are still more letters coming in."
"Obviously you've made tests." Brett handed back the folder of letters.
"So what do they show?"
"They show the whole thing's very simple; trouble is, nobody thought of it before it happened. You sit on the seat, the cloth depresses and opens up. That's normal, of course, but what also open up in this case are the metallic threads, which is still okay, providing you don't happen to be wearing mink. But if you are, some of the fine hairs go clown between the metallic threads. Get up, and the threads close, holding the mink hairs so they pull out from the coat. You can ruin a three-thousand-dollar coat in one trip around the block."
Brett grinned. "If word gets around, every woman in the country with an old mink will rush out for a ride, then put in a claim for a new coat."
"Nobody's laughing. Over at staff they've pushed the panic button."
"The fabric's out of production?"
Heberstein nodded. "As of this morning. And from now on we have another test around here with new fabrics. Rather obviously, it's known as the mink test."
"What's happening about all the seats already out?"
" God knows! And I'm glad that part's not my headache. The last I beard, it had gone as high as the chairman of the board. I do know the legal department is settling all claims quietly, as soon as they come in.
They've figured there'll be a few phony ones, but better to pay if there's a chance of keeping the whole thing under wraps."
"Mink wraps?"
The studio head said dourly, "Spare me the lousy jokes. You'll get all this through channels, but I thought you and a few others should know right away because of the Orion."
"Thanks." Brett nodded thoughtfully. It was true - changes would have to be made in Orion plans, though the particular area was not his responsibility. He was grateful, however, for another reason.
Within the next few days, he now decided, he must change either his car or the seats in his present one. Brett's car had Metallic Willow fabric and, coincidentally, he planned a birthday gift of mink next month which he had no wish to see spoiled. The mink, which undoubtedly would be worn in his car, was for Barbara.