Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 63

In This Section New York Exchange Page 11 American Exchange Page 12 Mutual Funds Page 13 Over the Counter Page 14 Detroit ifrcc tyttm Business Report SUNDAY, MAY 29, 1977 9-D" You Take a Jigger Of Mystery, a Map And a Case of CC mm no one fwyet dared tticwildsof Presoue Me County tofindit. BY BARRY ROMAN Free Press Business Writer Warming to its growing reputation as an Easter Bunny for adults, Hiram Walker will soon hide a case of Canadian Club whiskey in an exotic locale somewhere in the northeastern United States. Could that be exotic Michigan? Exotic Detroit? Hiram Walker executives would rather not say. Paranoia runs high before a whisky hunt. There are ears everywhere.

"I don't think we should zero in at this point," James Keith, the company's Canadian Club product manager, says somewhat evasively. "We will have to send two or three people into an area and we wouldn't want people waiting for them, spying on them when they bury it." THE CONCERN about secrecy is no joke. Since the company moved its game of hide and seek from overseas last year, it has had all it can do to keep the stuff hidden long enough to mi 1 Advertising reach out to the masses. Death Valley was the first case in the United States and it was a very popular search because it was near the large population in California." TRE COMPANY, which until last fall had much more experience hiding whisky than in having people find it, learned a good deal from the Death Valley hunt. The Death Valley whisky was found by two young California couples who used a metal detector.

Naughty. Naughty. (The company now buries whisky in cases held together by glue rather than nails.) The company also learned the importance of getting the word out when the whisky is found. In Death Valley it was only about two weeks between the first appearance of the company's ads and the discovery of the whisky. Sometime after that, Keith says, the company got a call from federal conservation people complaining that "Death Valley was overrun with hundreds of people still searching for the whisky, some of them getting stuck and many others getting lost." The company solved the information problem by posting a sign at the site notifying searchers that the whisky had been found.

"We were also concerned for a time about people digging all those holes out there maybe defacing the place," Keith said. "We were prepared to hire the Boy Scouts or somebody to fill them in again, but, as it turned out that wasn't necessary because people were pretty good about refilling the holes." The sign at the site also invites searchers to write the company and tell of their experiences, an invitation that has resulted in scores of letters and has enabled Keith to draw a portrait of the average participant in the hunt: "He's a 30-year-old guy with a wife and two kids, a four-wheel-drive vehicle and seven bucks to spend on a good bottle of whisky." AND HIS motives: "It's an outlet it gives people a reason to go someplace on a weekend." The letter writers get a thank-you letter and, where states permit, souvenir belt buckles for all participants. The most recent hunt, however, wasn't nearly so much fun for so many people as the one in California. The company buried whisky in "Bigfoot Country" in the state of Washington last run ads that tell people where look. The most recent cases were uncovered within a few days Nobody knows where the next case is going.

Maybe Michigan? nmwfffii-f bridge. The next site, like the others, will be chosen by the company from a test-marketed list submitted by its New York advertising agency, McCaff rey McCall. Two things are sure. That mysterious someplace in the northeastern United States will have "magic" in its name and it will be picturesque. "We talked once about putting one Deep in the Heart of Texas," Keith recalls.

"But the geographic center of the state turned out to be Brady, Texas where there's nothing as far as you can see but flat, dusty prairie." Keith suggests that the company is having such a good time with its whisky hunt that sometimes it's hard to keep things in perspective. "It's kind of far-fetched but we've considered whether we should hide a case of whisky in every state in the country," Keith says, but then quickly checks himself. "That would be a mechanical nightmare to carry out," he says. "I don't think we would ever do that." November and began running ads telling how to find it last February. "This is a place where 20-feet-deep snows are common in winter and we thought that nobody could possibly get to it until May or June at the earliest," Keith says.

Alas, the dry spell. "But because of the drought, there was only a little snow up there and someone was able to get in and find the Whisky within a few days after the ad campaign started." The somebody was 34-year-old Portland businessman Tom Dallon, who saw the ad in Playboy magazine and immediately recognized the terrain. "He was very knowledgeable about the area," Kieth explains. "He's a backpacker and owns an airplane with pontoons that enables him to get far back into the mountains, and he remembered once standing on the pile of green tailings from a mine described in the ad." OH L-THAT'S whisky under the after the company issued its somewhat vague instructions, suggesting that the public is warming to the campaign. The company usually hides the whisky, waits about four months and then launches the ads.

The whereabouts of the new case will be described in magazine ads this fall. It will be the third buried in the United States over the past year, yet only the eighth in a series going back 10 years. The first was parachuted atop Mount Kilimanjaro and is still there as far as anyone knows, as are the ones dropped into Loch Ness, the Coral Sea and onto Robinson Crusoe Island. Three have been found: beneath Angel Falls in Venezuela in 1968, in Death Valley, California last September, and in Washington's "Bigfoot Country" last February. "When we started this, we looked for exotic places like Loch Ness because we were trying to present Canadian Club as an exotic, unique thing," Keith explains.

"Now we're trying to ITS A SPORTING (UVNCI. Get Rich Quick? Not with Slow Pitch SEC Cites Founder of The Ill-Fated POM Corp. BY ALLAN SLOAN Free Press Business Writer In a footnote to the sad saga of POM the Securities Exchange Commission has charged POM and its founder, Kenneth Tureaud, with extensive violations of the securities laws. POM, based in Ann Arbor, was one of the Detroit area's hottest local stocks in the early 1970s, and investors from all over the country poured millions of dollars into the company and into other investments sold by Tureaud and his associates. The SEC, which has been investigating Tureaud and POM for years, charged in a lawsuit filed in U.S.

District Court in Detroit last week that Tureaud and POM filed false financial reports; misled investors; diverted about $1 million that investors thought would be used for drilling oil and natural gas wells; and paid secret fees in connection with the sales of securities. The suit also named another Tureaud company, RSA formerly Expressway Campsites. Such suits are relatively rare, because the SEC normally settles such matters with consent decrees. None of the people who received the alleged secret fees were named in the suit. Investors, in private actions, have sued a Southfit'Id law firm, Plotkin, Yolles, Siegel Turner, charging that it received special deals for putting investors into some of the ventures put together by Tureaud and his companies.

Though Tureaud has been sued many times by disgruntled investors, last week's suit marks the first time the SEC has formally cited him. California authorities issued a "desist and refrain" order against him in 1967 and the Detroit SEC office called him in for a lecture in 1969. David DeMuro, the SEC staff attorney who is handling the POM-Tureaud-RSA investigation, declined to say whether he's trying to bring additional lawsuits. Last week's SEC suit asks that Tureaud be forced to givo financial accountings to RSA stockholders, and that Tureaud and his associates and companies be forced to stop violating the securities laws. The SEC isn't asking for any criminal sanctions or fines.

IN A PREVIOUS legal action Involving Tureaud-related deals, the SEC obtained a consent decree from Donald Decker and International Mining Petroleum Co. Without admitting guilt, Decker and the company agreed not to violate securities laws. In the POM suit, the SEC charged the company with submitting false financial information overstating its assets and reporting profits when the company was actually losing money. The company, a hot stock among "swinging" brokers, bankers and investors, was shaken in July 1972 when it reported publicly that it had lost $7 million and had a negative net worth. The stock is now virtually worthless.

Tureaud, a former University of Michigan fullback who often involved professional athletes in his projects, has apparently been selling securities Wil iff' ftkJ teams in the South and Southwest for the 1978 season. The price for those new franchises has been raised to $100,000. According to league spokesman Tim Koel-ble, the existing teams should be showing a profit in "two or three years." 1977 is another matter, however. Koclble said: "One thing we didn't do is put our focus on making money in the first year. Why sell a person on the fact that he's going to make loads of money and then turn around and see him lose a couple of thousand dollars?" Detroit Caesars is a case in point.

There is little chance the club will show a profit this year. Here's why: The team will play its home games at East Detroit Memorial FielM, where Hitch hopes to double the existing capacity of 3,500 seats. Caesars has 28 home games, all double-headers, with a single admission price for both games of $2 for adults and $1 for children under 16. Under league rules, the home team keeps 100 percent of the gate receipts and makes nothing on the road. If the team plays to an audience of 3,000 adults and 2,000 children at each game, the gate receipts will be $8,000 a night, or $112,000 for the season.

Caesars will not share In the parking or most of the footi concessions, but does expect additional revenue from the sale of pizza at the park (naturally), promotional items, and the lease of billboard space. PLAYER FINES, such as the $500 levied against ex-Tiger star Norm Cash for not showing up at press day, may be an occasional source of income but are not exactly regular parts of the budget. Total revenue for the season, according to Please turn to Page 14D, Col. 1 BY ALEX TAYLOR Free Press Business Writer Within the next few weeks, Mike Hitch, president of Little Caesar Enterprises expects to to become the first man in America to perfect the instant pizza. A Little Caesars pizza restaurant will operate a five-tiered automated pizza oven, supposedly capable of turning out a finished pizza in 25 seconds.

Hitch, who already owns 50 restaurants and franchises out 100 more, could become even richer than he is now. This weekend, Hitch's new professional softball team, the Detroit Caesars, played its first games in the new American Professional Slo-Pilch League. Unlike instant pizza, the softball team Is expected to be an instant money loser. Based on Hitch's own rough estimates, drawn up before the start of the season, the club will lose thousands of dollars this year. "It is an extremely high-risk situation," Hitch admits.

The American Professional Slo-P itch League is the latest attempt to cash in on America's presumed fascination with spectator sports. It was organized by promoters in Columbus, Ohio, who have managed to convince businessmen in 12 cities to ante up $25,000 apiece for franchises. The new league includes teams in New York City; Pittsburgh; Cleveland; Cincinnati; Trenton, N.J., and, naturally, Columbus. Detroit will play in the Midwest division with teams from Chicago, Minnesota and Milwaukee. FRANCHISE OWNERS include the heatf of a sporting goods store chain, an electronics businessman, and the owner of a sheet steel company.

Besides Caesars, two other teams are connected with food and drink establish- Free Press Photo by SCOTT ECCKER Mike Hitch, whose Caesars professional softball team doesn't figure to make money this year, but which Hitch insists can be a paying proposition in the future. more exciting than baseball and will draw from a captive audience of 26 million people who play softball in organized leagues. They are already planning to a'dd 12 new ments: The Milwaukee Copper Hearth and the Minnesota Goofy's. The league's owners have grandiose plans for their new creation, which they say is Chrysler Shakes Up and Shrinks Its Big-Car Line for about 10 years. An exceptionally persuasive man, Tureaud has been involved with various projects, including syndicates for quar-terhorses; a proposed wild animal preserve near a highway intersection in Harrison, and a proposed National Football League franchise for either Birmingham, or Mexico City.

The SEC said that in connection with the proposed NFL franchise, Tureaud made false and misleading statements about various matters, among them, "the likelihood of a 1 1-known former NFL player and current NFL head coach becoming head coach of any newly acquired NFL expansion franchise." Some Chrysler models, now built only at Belvi-dere, 111., will be switched to the Jefferson Avenue assembly lines. "That probably will require some increase in the line speed at that plant," Brown said. "It certainly "won't mean any slowing down." The Belvidere plant, meanwhile, will be shut down for nearly four months, beginning July 19, to convert its lines to assembly of the company's new front-wheel-drive subcompacts, the Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni. "Changing Belvidere over from big-car production to small cars," he said, "means a major, major conversion job in which practically the whole plant will be virtually gutted. "And it will also involve Installation of a lot of highy automated equipment such as we have already put in at our St.

Louis and Newark (Del.) assembly plants." years, moved sharply upward in 1976, and thus far in 1977 are running 25 percent ahead of last year. Among all of the company's nameplates, only the Plymouth Valiant, Dodge Aspen, both subcompacts, and the Chrysler Cordoba, a luxury intermediate, are exceeding the full-size Chrysler in sales volume. With the dropping of the Royal Monaco, Brown is counting on some 1978 model buyers who normally would opt for that car shifting instead to the intermediate-sized Monaco. Both the Monaco and its Plymouth counterpart, the Fury, will be phased out of production at the end of the 1978 model year. Like the Gran Fury, the Royal Monaco has been a disappointment to the company in the marketplace in recent years, but for 1977 it is running slightly ahead of its depressed sales pace of a year ago.

THE WHOLESALE reduction in the company's big-car model lineup for 1978 will mean that the surviving models all will be built at the Jefferson Avenue plant in Detroit. the Dodge Diplomat and Chrysler LeBaron, to be introduced this fall, will adequately cover the "high end" of that market. For the 1978 model year, this scenario will reduce Chrysler's full-size car lineup by 17 models, leaving the company with only the Chrysler New Yorker and Newport models in the big-car segment until the 1979 model year. "WE ARE DROPPING the Gran Fury because our (Chrysler-Plymouth) tjealers don't need two lines of big cars," said Brown, who is head of North American automotive operations. With Chrysler concentrating on the compact car market in recent years, Gran Fury sales have hit the skids, declining steadily since 1973 to the point that they now account for less than one percent of total domestic-built car deliveries.

In sharp contrast, the Chrysler New Yorkers and Newports, which were in a similar decline for several BY TOM KLEENE Free Press Automotive Writer Chrysler Corp. will halt production of its slow-selling, full-size Plymouth Gran Fury, a staple in the automobile market for nearly half a century, at the end of the 1977 model run this July in one of a series of related moves. Identifying Chrysler's major steps in realigning the company's big cars for 1978 and beyond, which have been the subject of speculation for many months, Executive Vice-Presi'dent R.K. Brown also said in an interview last week that: The Dodge Royal Monaco will be put on the shelf after the 1977 model year, but only until the start of the 1979 model run when down-sized versions of the Royal Monaco as well as the Chrysler New Yorker and Newport will be introduced. The Chrysler line station wagons also will be dropped permanently at the entl of model production on the assumption that wagon versions of.