Wheels Page 11

  Adam asked the critical question. “Cost?”

  “You won’t like it.” The engineer hesitated, knowing the reaction his next words would produce. “About five dollars.”

  Adam groaned. “God Almighty!”

  He was faced with a frustrating choice. Whichever route they went would be negative and costly. The engineer’s first alternative—redesign—would be less expensive, costing probably half a million to a million dollars in retooling. But it would create delays, and the Orion’s introduction would be put off three to six months which, in itself, could be disastrous for many reasons.

  On the other hand, on a million cars, cost of the two add-ons—the floor reinforcement and brace—would be five million dollars, and it was expected that many more Orions than a million would be built and sold. Millions of dollars to be added to production expense, to say nothing of lost profit, and all for an item wholly negative! In auto construction, five dollars was a major sum, and auto manufacturers thought normally in pennies, shaving two cents here, a nickel there, necessary because of the immense total numbers involved. Adam said in deep disgust, “Goddam!”

  He glanced at Brett. The designer said, “I guess it isn’t funny.”

  Adam’s outburst in the car was not the first clash they had had since the Orion project started. Sometimes it had been Brett who flared up. But through everything so far they had managed to remain friends. It was as well, because there was a new project ahead of them, at the moment codenamed Farstar.

  Ian Jameson announced, “If you want to drive over to the lab, we’ve a car with the add-ons for you to see.”

  Adam nodded sourly. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Brett DeLosanto looked upward incredulously. “You mean that hunk of scrap, and the other, ’ll cost five bucks!”

  He was staring at a steel strip running across the underside of an Orion, and secured by bolts.

  Adam Trenton, Brett, and Ian Jameson were inspecting the proposed floor reinforcement from an inspection area beneath a dynamometer, so that the whole of the car’s underside was open to their view. The dynamometer, an affair of metal plates, rollers, and instrumentation, with a vague resemblance to a monstrous service station hoist, allowed a car to be operated as if on the road, while viewed from any angle.

  They had already inspected, while above, the other cowl-to-steering column-to-cowl brace.

  Jameson conceded, “Possibly you could save a few cents from cost, but no more, after allowing for material, machining, then bolt fittings and installation labor.”

  The engineer’s manner, a kind of pedantic detachment as if cost and economics were really none of his concern, continued to irritate Adam, who asked, “How much is Engineering protecting itself? Do we really need all that?”

  It was a perennial question from a product planner to an engineer. The product men regularly accused engineers of building in, everywhere, greater strength margins than necessary, thus adding to an automobile’s cost and weight while diminishing performance. Product Planning was apt to argue: If you let the Iron Rings have their way, every car would have the strength of Brooklyn Bridge, ride like an armored truck, and last as long as Stonehenge. Taking an adversary view, engineers declaimed: Sure, we allow margins because if something fails we’re the ones who take the rap. If product planners did their own engineering, they’d achieve light weight-most likely with a balsawood chassis and tinfoil for the engine block.

  “There’s no engineering protection there.” It was Jameson’s turn to be huffy. “We’ve reduced the NVH to what we believe is an acceptable level. If we went a more complicated route—which would cost more—we could probably take it out entirely. So far we haven’t.”

  Adam said noncommittally, “We’ll see what this does.”

  Jameson led the way as the trio climbed a metal stairway from the inspection level to the main floor of the Noise and Vibration Laboratory above.

  The lab—a building at the proving ground which was shaped like an airplane hangar and divided into specialist work areas, large and small—was busy as usual with NVH conundrums tossed there by various divisions of the company. One problem now being worked on urgently was a high-pitched, girlish-sounding scream emitted by a new-type brake on diesel locomotives. Industrial Marketing had enjoined sternly: The stopping power must be retained, but locomotives should sound as if being braked, not raped. Another poser—this from Household Products Division—was an audible click in a kitchen oven control clock; a competitor’s clock, though less efficient, was silent. Knowing that the public distrusted new or different sounds and that sales might suffer if the click remained, Household Products had appealed to the NVH lab to nix the click but not the clock.

  Automobiles, however, produced the bulk of the laboratory’s problems. A recent one stemmed from revised styling of an established model car. The new body style produced a drum sound while in motion; tests showed that the sound resulted from a windshield which had been reshaped. After weeks of hit-and-miss experimentation, NVH engineers eliminated the drum noise by introducing a crinkle in the car’s metal floor. No one, including the engineers, knew exactly why the crinkle stopped the windshield drumming; the important thing was—it did.

  The present stage of Orion testing in the lab had been set up on the dynamometer. Hence the car could be operated at any speed, either manually or by remote control, for hours, days, or weeks continuously, yet never move from its original position on the machine’s rollers.

  The Orion which they had looked at from beneath was ready to go. Stepping over the steel floor plates of the dynamometer, Adam Trenton and Ian Jameson climbed inside, Adam at the wheel.

  Brett DeLosanto was no longer with them. Having satisfied himself that the proposed add-ons would not affect the car’s outward appearance, Brett had returned outside to review a minor change made recently in the Orion grille. Designers liked to see results of their work out of doors—“on the grass,” as they put it. Sometimes, in open surroundings and natural light, a design had unexpected visual effects, compared with its appearance in a studio. When the Orion, for example, was first viewed in direct sunlight the front grille had unexpectedly appeared black instead of bright silver, as it should. A change of angle in the grille had been necessary to correct it.

  A girl technician in a white coat came out from a glass-lined control booth alongside the car. She inquired, “Is there any special kind of road you’d like, Mr. Trenton?”

  “Give him a bumpy ride,” the engineer said. “Let’s take one from California.”

  “Yes, sir.” The girl returned to the booth, then leaned out through the doorway, holding a magnetic tape reel in her hand. “This is State Route 17, between Oakland and San Jose.” Going back into the booth, she pressed the reel onto a console and passed the tape end through a take-up spool.

  Adam turned the ignition key. The Orion’s engine sprang to life.

  The tape now turning inside the glass booth would, Adam knew, transfer the real road surface, electronically, to the dynamometer rollers beneath the car. The tape was one of many in the lab’s library, and all had been made by sensitive recording vehicles driven over routes in North America and Europe. Thus, actual road conditions, good and bad, could be reproduced instantly for test and study.

  He put the Orion in drive and accelerated.

  Speed rose quickly to 50 mph. The Orion’s wheels and the dynamometer rollers were racing, the car itself standing still. At the same time, Adam felt an insistent pounding from below.

  “Too many people think California freeways are great,” Ian Jameson observed. “It surprises them when we demonstrate how bad they can be.”

  The speedometer showed 65.

  Adam nodded. Auto engineers, he knew, were critical of California road building because the state’s roads—due to the absence of frost-were not made deep. The lack of depth allowed concrete slabs to become depressed at the center and curled and broken at the edges—a result of pounding by heavy trucks. Thus, when a
car came to the end of a slab, in effect it fell off and bounced onto the next. The process caused continuous bumps and vibrations which cars had to be engineered to absorb.

  The Orion’s speed nudged 80. Jameson said, “Here’s where it happens.”

  As he spoke, a hum and vibration—additional to the roughness of the California freeway—extended through the car. But the effect was slight, the hum low-pitched, vibration minor. The NVH would no longer be startling to a car’s occupants, as it had been on the test track earlier.

  Adam queried, “And that’s all of it?”

  “That’s all that’s left,” Ian Jameson assured him. “The braces take the rest out. As I said, we consider what remains to be at an acceptable level.” Adam allowed speed to drop off, and the engineer added, “Let’s try it on a smooth road.”

  With another tape on the control console—a portion of Interstate 80 in Illinois—the road unevenness disappeared while the hum and vibration seemed correspondingly lower.

  “We’ll try one more road,” Jameson said, “a really tough one.” He signaled to the lab assistant in the booth, who smiled.

  As Adam accelerated, even at 60 mph the Orion jolted alarmingly. Jameson announced, “This is Mississippi—U.S. 90, near Biloxi. The road wasn’t good to start with, then Hurricane Camille loused it up completely. The portion we’re on now still hasn’t been fixed. Naturally, no one would do this speed there unless they had suicide in mind.”

  At 80 mph the road, transmitted through the dynamometer, was so bad that the car’s own vibration was undetectable. Ian Jameson looked pleased.

  As speed came off, he commented, “People don’t realize how good our engineering has to be to cope with all kinds of roads, including plenty of others like that.”

  Jameson was off again, Adam thought, in his abstract engineer’s world. Of more practical importance was the fact that the Orion’s NVH problem could be solved. Adam had already decided that the add-on route, despite its appalling cost, was the one they would have to travel, rather than delay the Orion’s debut. Of course, the company’s executive vice-president, Hub Hewitson, who regarded the Orion as his own special baby, would go through the ceiling when he heard about the five dollars added cost. But he would learn to live with it, as Adam had—almost—already.

  He got out of the car, Ian Jameson following. On the engineer’s instructions, Adam left the motor running. Now, the girl in the booth took over, operating the Orion by remote control. At 80 on the dynamometer, the vibration was no more serious outside than it had been within.

  Adam asked Jameson, “You’re sure the bracing will stand up to long use?”

  “No question about it. We’ve put it through every test. We’re satisfied.”

  So was Jameson, Adam thought; too damn satisfied. The engineer’s detachment—it seemed like complacency—still irritated him. “Doesn’t it ever bother you,” Adam asked, “that everything you people do here is negative? You don’t produce anything. You only take things out, eliminate.”

  “Oh, we produce something.” Jameson pointed to the dynamometer rollers, still turning swiftly, impelled by the Orion’s wheels. “See those? They’re connected to a generator; so are the other dynamometers in the lab. Every time we operate a car, the rollers generate electricity. We’re coupled in to Detroit Edison, and we sell the power to them.” He looked challengingly at Adam. “Sometimes I think it’s as useful as a few things which have come out of Product Planning.”

  Adam smiled, conceding. “But not the Orion.”

  “No,” Jameson said. “I guess we all have hopes for that.”

  8

  The nightgown which Erica Trenton finally bought was in Laidlaw-Beldon’s on Somerset Mall in Troy. Earlier, she had browsed through stores in Birmingham without seeing anything that appealed to her as sufficiently special for the purpose she had in mind, so she continued to cruise the district in her sports convertible, not really minding because it was pleasant, for a change, to have something special to do.

  Somerset Mall was a large, modern plaza, east on Big Beaver Road, with quality stores, drawing much of their patronage from well-to-do auto industry families living in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills. Erica had shopped there often and knew her way around most of the stores, including LaidlawBeldon’s.

  She realized, the instant she saw it, that the nightgown was exactly right. It was a sheer nylon with matching peignoir, in pale beige, almost the color of her hair. The total effect, she knew, would be to project an image of honey blondeness. A frosted orange lipstick, she decided, would round out the sensual impression she intended to create, tonight, for Adam.

  Erica had no charge account at the store, and paid by check. Afterward she went to Cosmetics to buy a lipstick since she was uncertain if she had one at home, quite the right shade.

  Cosmetics was busy. While waiting, glancing over a display of lipstick colors, Erica became aware of another shopper at the perfume counter close by. It was a woman in her sixties who was informing a salesclerk, “I want it for my daughter-in-law. I’m really not sure … Let me try the Norell.”

  Using a sample vial, the clerk—a bored brunette—obliged.

  “Yes,” the woman said. “Yes, that’s nice. I’ll take that. An ounce size.”

  From a mirror-faced store shelf behind her, out of reach of customers, the clerk selected a white, black-lettered box and placed it on the counter. “That’s fifty dollars, plus sales tax. Will it be cash or charge?”

  The older woman hesitated. “Oh, I hadn’t realized it would be that much.”

  “We have smaller sizes, madam.”

  “No … Well, you see, it’s a gift. I suppose I ought … But I’ll wait and think it over.”

  As the woman left the counter, so did the perfume salesclerk. She moved through an archway, momentarily out of sight. On the counter, the boxed perfume remained where the clerk had left it.

  Irrationally, incredibly, in Erica’s mind a message formed: Norell’s my perfume. Why not take it?

  She hesitated, shocked at her own impulse. While she did, a second message urged: Go on! You’re wasting time! Act now!

  Afterward, she remembered that she waited long enough to wonder: Was it really her own mind at work? Then deliberately, unhurriedly, but as if a magnetic force were in control, Erica moved from Cosmetics to Perfume. Without haste or waste motion, she lifted the package, opened her handbag and dropped it in. The handbag had a spring fastener which snapped as it closed. The sound seemed to Erica like the firing of a gun. It would draw attention!

  What had she done?

  She stood trembling, waiting, afraid to move, expecting an accusing voice, a hand on her shoulder, a shouted “Thief!”

  Nothing happened. But it would; she knew it would, at any moment.

  How could she explain? She couldn’t. Not with the evidence in her handbag. She reasoned urgently: Should she take the package out, return it to where it was before the foolish, unbelievable impulse swept over her and made her act as she had? She had never done this before, never, nor anything remotely like it.

  Still trembling, conscious of her own heartbeat, Erica asked herself: Why? What reason was there, if any, for what she had just done? The most absurd thing was, she didn’t need to steal—the perfume or anything else. There was money in her purse, a checkbook.

  Even now she could call the salesclerk to the counter, could spill out money to pay for the package, and that would be that. Providing that she acted quickly. Now!

  No.

  Obviously, because still nothing had happened, no one had seen her. If they had, Erica thought, by now she would have been accosted, questioned, perhaps taken away. She turned. Casually, feigning indifference, she surveyed the store in all directions. Business was going on as usual. No one seemed in the least interested in her, or was even looking her way. The perfume salesclerk had not reappeared. Unhurriedly, as before, Erica moved back to Cosmetics.

  She reminded herself: she had wanted some perfum
e anyway. The way she had got it had been foolish and dangerous and she would never, ever, do the same thing again. But she had it now, and what was done was done. Trying to undo it would create difficulties, require explanations, perhaps followed by accusation, all of which were best avoided.

  A salesclerk at Cosmetics was free. With her most engaging smile and manner Erica asked to try some orange lipstick shades.

  One danger, she knew, still remained: the clerk at the perfume counter. Would the girl miss the package she had put down? If so, would she remember that Erica had been close by? Erica’s instinct was to leave, to hurry from the store, but reason warned her: she would be less conspicuous where she was. She deliberately dawdled over the lipstick choice.

  Another customer had stopped at Perfumes. The salesclerk returned, acknowledged the newcomer, then, as if remembering, looked at the counter where the Norell package had been left. The salesgirl seemed surprised. She turned quickly, inspecting the stock shelf from where she had taken the package to begin with. Several others were on the shelf; some, the ounce-size Norell. Erica sensed the girl’s uncertainty: Had she put the package back or not?

  Erica, being careful not to watch directly, heard the customer who had just arrived ask a question. The perfume clerk responded, but seemed worried and was looking around her. Erica felt herself inspected. As she did, she smiled at the cosmetics clerk and told her, “I’ll take this one.” Erica sensed the inspection by the other salesclerk finish.

  Nothing had happened. The salesgirl was probably more worried about her own carelessness, and what might happen to her as a result of it, than anything else. As Erica paid for the lipstick, opening her handbag only a little to extract a billfold, she relaxed.

  Before leaving, with a sense of mischief, she even stopped at the perfume counter to try a sample of Norell.

  Only when Erica was nearing the store’s outer door did her nervousness return. It became terror as she realized: She might have been seen after all, then watched and allowed to get this far so that the store would have a stronger case against her. She seemed to remember reading somewhere that that kind of thing happened. The parking mall, visible outside, seemed a waiting, friendly haven—near, yet still far away.