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HM: And what do you know? We get these unsolicited offers for jobs from all three companies.

TI: Ford, Chrysler --

HM: GM.

TI: GM.

HM: So he says -- we all, all three of us got this thing. And this was from the student paper that we generated, and Mike kind of spiced it up a little bit to make it sound better. And then he sent this thing plus the transcript letter to the companies. So at the time we were being recruited, the final year, the, all of us got a, maybe, at least fifteen proposals for job functions. And I, I had about nineteen of 'em, I guess. So we get this thing from these three companies, and on spring vacation we decided, well, let's go see all of them. So --

TI: All nineteen? Or all, when you say three --

HM: No, the three, three...

TI: The three --

HM: ...in Detroit, see. Yeah.

TI: Okay. Then you go get another car. [Laughs]

HM: Well, anyway, they sent us -- and, and we accepted on the dates, what dates and all that kind of stuff. Well, they sent three airline tickets, round-trip, to each of us. One comes from one company and another one comes, and heck...

TI: Oh?

HM: At that time airline fees were pretty high. And said, what? We should cash the two of them that we don't need, and change the dates to be the outside dates. And that's what we did. But we didn't do it 'til after we came back. But we went to -- we ended up in Detroit on Sunday night on this airplane trip. And they put us into a first-class hotel. Monday morning, we get a call from the desk saying this, "There's a car waiting for you guys." So, go down there and what do you know? There's a 75-series Cadillac with a chauffeur. [Laughs] And he's got the door open. He says, "They're expecting you guys." So we hop into this thing.

TI: And this was the which one of the --

HM: General Motors.

TI: Okay.

HM: Yeah. So they, he takes us to that proving ground -- what the heck was it called? -- Midland Proving Ground or something. It was still being constructed. The test track was still not finished. And they bring us into this engineering building. And, and the first thing they do is they try to show off all the development labs. And here they're using paper strain gauges. And even at the Boeing wind tunnel we were using Bakelite Baldwin Hamilton strain gauges, so we thought, man, these guys are way behind. And here's a bunch of strain gauge on this automobile chassis and in the, the sheet metal area. And they're trying to figure out the loads on it when they get hit with bumps and all this kind of stuff, stiffness criteria and the dynamics of it. Anyway, they thought we were going to be impressed by looking at this stuff. We thought -- this other kid and I, used -- worked in the wind tunnel together. I says, "Hey, that's paper gauges." That's --

TI: Now, was this an indication that the aeronautical side was a lot more advanced?

HM: Oh, yeah. We were probably five years advanced of these guys. And that's why they, this paper was so interesting to them. Here's a concept that we're using that should have been available within the automobile industry to determine the, the performance function of their engines. And there was nothing there.

TI: Right.

HM: There was no equipment that was the same as what we were proposing or what we had shown. So anyway, GM was very interested. And they made a horrendous offer. And --

TI: To all three of you?

HM: Yeah. All three of us. They said, "If you join our instrumentation group, here's what we have to offer you. You get a Chevrolet Biscayne automobile free for one year, and you have to turn it back in. Only thing you have to do is to put oil and gas in the damn thing. And then you have to write up any deficiencies of the operation of the car. And if you get promoted we'll give you the next model, we'll you give you the Bel Air." I mean, it goes up. So you're on the bottom rung to begin with, but you get the car for nothing. You get to use it for a whole year. And they give us a whole bunch of stuff, a retirement plan and all this kind of stuff. Well, those two days were very impressive except for the lab equipment. And --

TI: But then weren't you excited that you were thinking, and you had so much to offer them that you could really improve what they were doing?

HM: Oh, yeah.

TI: 'Cause of your knowledge.

HM: Well, we would change the entire strain gauging process. We used some very logical techniques...

TI: Right.

HM: Instead of this dumb paper. Duco cement. That's what they were using, paper gauges with Duco cement. And you can't use that in the wind tunnel because it's so inaccurate and got so much drift that you, you can't use it for accurate measurements.

And, but anyway, that was the first situation. And then we went to Chrysler. And the, the facilities weren't as, as great as General Motors. And then we go to the engineers desk. And they have all the GM reports on this Chrysler desk. The main R&D that was being done in the automotive industry at that time was General Motors, and everybody robbed General Motors' data to design their vehicles. I didn't realize that. But anyway, Chrysler was a little bit poorer.

And then by the time we got to Ford we were taking the secretaries out for lunch because nobody else would bring us to lunch. It went downhill very quickly. And then they said, "We're going to show you a preview of this new car that's going to revolutionize the automotive industry." Anyway, they opened up this thing, and they had this funny-looking grille on the front. That was the Edsel...

TI: Right.

HM: ...they were showing us. And they thought it was so great, those guys. And I thought to myself, how in the heck they going to sell this sick little vehicle? But that was the, kind of a let down. It started off real great, at GM, and then Chrysler was a little bit less. And by the time we ended up in Ford, man, they didn't even bother to get us back to the hotel. We had to figure out a way to get back. [Laughs] I mean, it went from extremely good type of accommodations and service functions for us down to zilch at the end.

TI: Well, how did Ford and Chrysler think that they could compete with GM to hire you? I would think that they didn't have the money, they didn't have the research facilities.

HM: Oh, no. They had the hiring budget. There's no problem there. But if you looked at the facilities, like at Ford, you looked at their place where they're doing the prototype work, the floor's dirt. It's not concrete. It's dirt. They were using that kind of facility. And that was the standard in the industry at that time. And GM was the only one that had real nice facilities, clean, really well-staffed. Everybody was in the white smock. Ford, they looked like a bunch of tramps in there. We eliminated Ford altogether. Chrysler was eliminated. And we said the only one we would consider would be GM. But then the three of us, none of us decided we wanted to live in Detroit. So when we went back we just cashed in our airplane tickets. And we had multiple expense accounts. And so we made quite a bit of money on that trip. But, but none of us wanted to go work for them, even though the salaries were extremely good.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.