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 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."
Chapter 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 Laidlaw-Beldon'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."