This kind of spending yielded a certain amount of influence, and that influence, seemed to be being used to limit advertising of bootlegged cars. From an auto industry point of view, it was the perfect resolution to the problem of bootlegging: the safety valve remained in working order, but the non-public nature of the lower prices meant that the effect on other or later sales was minimized.

The New York Times, the Journal reported, had changed its advertising policies in late April, just after the Justice Department rejected GM’s anti-bootlegging contract language. The Times, very much still a local paper, now refused to accept advertising offering new cars for sale by non-franchised dealers. The Times’s advertising director said, “It is our opinion that our readers’ interest is best served by doing business with franchised dealers.”

New cars were defined as those with fewer than 2500 miles on them. One independent new-car dealer continued to advertise in the Times, indicating that its cars for sale had “run over 2,500 miles”. But a Journal reporter visiting the showroom noted that of the sixty cars on the showroom floor “not one… appeared to have run 2,500 miles. Some still had shreds of factory wrapping on them.” Mileage indicators on a dozen cars checked by the reporter ranged from one mile to thirty-six miles. A salesman at the independent dealership told the Journal, “We don’t have any used cars. That’s the only way [the Times] let us advertise.”

Nor was the Times alone. The New York Journal-American had gone so far as to take out an advertisement of its own in Automotive News headlined “NO ‘BOOTLEGGING’ PROBLEMS IN THE NEW YORK JOURNAL-AMERICAN.” The classified display advertising manager at the New York Daily News, the nation’s largest-circulation paper, reportedly acknowledged to an independent dealer that he feared the loss of other business if he continued to accept advertising from bootleggers. “Zone managers [from manufacturers] have told us face-to-face across the table what would happen to us if we took ads from discounters.” The dealer had a similar experience with the New York Mirror, the city’s (and the nation’s) second-largest selling newspaper.

But even before the Journal’s article was published, the reporting of the story had an effect. The Mirror reversed itself, and resumed accepting advertising from the bootleggers. The New York World Telegram & Sun declared that it was re-examining its policies. The ad manager from the New York Herald Tribune, the most direct competitor of the Times, told a Journal reporter, “This is a very touchy subject: I understand the F.B.I. is asking some of the same questions you’re asking.” He added, “I wouldn’t say we have a policy.”

Industry reaction was swift. On the day the story was published, Ward’s Automotive Reports canceled the Journal’s subscription to the weekly newsletter.

The confrontation between Barney Kilgore’s newspaper and Harlow Curtice’s company was only beginning.

On May 28, the Journal published another exclusive story, this one the work of Detroit bureau chief John Williams, revealing details of the styling of the 1955 new car models due in the fall.

Read today, Williams’s story seems innocuous, even perhaps excessively promotional. It began: “Forecast for 1955 auto models: More makes will be thoroughly restyled than ever before in the half-century of automotive history. Under the hoods will be new, more muscular engines.” Additional revelations: more makes “joining the wrap-around windshield trend,” “bigger bumpers, bolder tail lights, plenty of chrome ‘gingerbread.’ Many a car will stare at you in a different way: its headlamps will be visored.” V-8 engines would proliferate, horsepower would continue to grow. Illustrations for the article included renderings of the new Chevvy (then itself rendered with two “v”’s) and Dodge. Making clear throughout that the reporting, which had taken more than a month, was based largely on interviews with industry die-makers, the article detailed projected changes in all eighteen car brands then on the market.

The designs were months away from being unveiled but the dies and tools required for creation of the ‘55’s are being made right now; patient prowling in the shops which make these disclose much information. And men within the auto companies will often talk about what competitors have afoot: they make it their business to know.

Among the GM lineup, only Chevrolet and Pontiac had significant changes in store: Both models, Williams’s “patient prowling” revealed, were slated to more closely resemble their cousins at Buick and Oldsmobile.

Williams later recalled, “I worked hard, got my material together, and got lucky. Someone offered me pictures.” Pressed by an editor to get reaction from the manufacturers, Williams couldn’t get anyone to agree to look at the renderings, save a representative from GM. He remembered,

I went to the General Motors headquarters on Grand Avenue [in Detroit]. The press relations man came out of his office to see me and looked at the picture I showed him [of the ’55 Chevvy]. When I asked him to comment on its accuracy, he declined rather tersely and returned to his office.

From an industry perspective there was a problem—a big problem. But the problem wasn’t the renderings—it was the story’s timing. As the story itself noted, “the alterations are certainly intended to be sufficient so that 1954 models will strike their owners as old-fashioned, once the ‘55’s are in the showrooms; they will stir the itch for a brand-new car.” In September or November (the timing of new model releases was also kept a secret) that would be good for business: the ‘54’s would be nearly all sold. Just ahead of June, traditionally the industry’s biggest sales month, the revelations were thought by the automakers to cause a possible disaster: sales of the about-to-be-“old-fashioned” ‘54’s could dry up prematurely, as buyers awaited the exciting ‘55’s. The president of Chrysler told Williams he “had put a dagger into the hearts of the dealers.”