Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1959)

THIS IS IT! With Corvair (I to r) W. G. Power, Chevrolet ad manager; Colin Campbell, executive v.p. and Chevy account exec at CampbellEwald; K. E. "Gene" Staley, Chevy sales manager; Henry G. Little, chairman of the board at C-E. Corvair Is the revolutionary car in I960 committee composed of 12 Chevrolet admen and a like number from Campbell-Ewald. It took place yesterday morning in the GM building, where the agency is headquartered along with its client. The picture, taken exclusively for SPONSOR, was snapped just after the committee has screened and approved the tv commercials that announce the new cars. It is the first time that anyone around here can recall an ad committee meeting being interrupted for pictures. "The committee, where every Chevrolet member has his counterpart from the agency, is unique in automotive advertising," says W. G. (Bill) Power, Chevrolet ad manager. "It was set up back in the early thirties, and has worked well." "The relationship between Chevrolet and ourselves," says Colin Campbell, C-E executive vice president and Chevrolet account supervisor, "is the closest thing to a partnership that I ever saw." In their 37 years together, never have the partners had a more exciting year than this. First, Chevrolet has a brand new story to tell about improvements on the 16 models that comprise its Impala-Bel Air-Biscayne car line and station wagons. Transmission tunnels in these have been shaved down about 25%, making for roomier interiors; rear ends have undergone re-styling. Second, Chevrolet trucks (this year there are 164 differ, ent models, up from 139 last year) have a startling sales message — for the first time torsion-spring suspension has been introduced into trucks for shockproof rides. To cap it all, there's the Corvair. Of the Big Three's entry into the compact, economy cars this year, Corvair is the revolutionary. A rear engine car ( Ford's Falcon and Chrysler's Valiant are both traditional front engines) ; air-cooled (the first U. S. air-cooled engine since Franklin in the 1920s) ; a horizontal aircraft type engine, and independent suspension on all four wheels. Nine years ago, Chevrolet engineers began developing this car for the U.S. market. A smoke-screen, laid to throw off competitors, was to name it Holden 25 (Holden is GM in Australia) and to ask for bids on machinery "FOB San Francisco," although the purchases actually wound up at Chevrolet in Detroit. If word of the car had leaked, it would still have been assumed to be for the Australian market. Campbell-Ewald came into the picture about three years ago. By then Chevrolet engineers had decided the experimental Holden 25 might well be the U. S. compact car. In cooperation with Chevrolet's research arm, the C-E market research department set out to sample the tastes of a demanding and sometimes fickle U. S. public. "We didn't know what we'd find out," one member of the C-E research team recalls, "and, what's more, we didn't know what we wanted to find out. The idea of Chevrolet bringing 30 SPONSOR 3 OCTOBER 1959