VISITOR FROM MALAYA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 March 1940, Page 9

VISITOR FROM MALAYA

EXPANSION OF MOTOR TRADE. Mr Michels, managing director of Ford Motor Company (Malaya) Ltd., with Mrs Michels, has been holidaying ;n New Zealand. They have been away from Singapore for nearly eight months, have already visited U.S.A, and Canada, and are now visiting Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on the way home.' This long pleasure-cum-business trip is necessary when working in the East, for the climate is terrifically hot, and Europeans need the iong rest which comes every three years.

Mr Michels's territory embraces an area as large as the United States. It has a population of 82 millions, comprises many races, four languages and 52 dialects, four different types of coinage, and every possible kind of country, from arid wastes to thick, impenetrable jungles. Yet in all there are less than 300,000 Europeans.

Fascinating stories of the East are told by Mr Michels, who admits that he is anxious to return to this land of contrasts and glamour. Whilst he has teen away a new Ford factory is being erected of steel and reinforced concrete on the main concrete highway to Singapore. It will be similar in design to the New Zealand factory, and about the same size as the original plant. It is to be set well back amid lawns and native trees and on a rising terrace, so that passers-by will get an excellent impression of this, the most modern automobile plant in the Far East.