What was going on when I was born?

Some people thought it was a school bus, some an ambulance. Some people said it was ''cute.'' Others said it was ''the strangest thing'' they had ever seen. At least one woman just plain refused to get into the vehicle, experimental taxi No. 304. In all, drivers of the taxi - a cross between a station wagon and a van - said they had lost up to a dozen fares a day because New Yorkers did not realize that their vehicle was for hire.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1984 The Economy The Administration is unlikely to seriously consider a V.A.T. - value-added tax - as a means of narrowing the Federal budget deficit, Treasury Secretary Regan said. A Treasury review of tax proposals is expected to be released in December. (Page D1.)

The Giants started two rookie linebackers today against the potent Atlanta Falcons, seemingly an invitation to disaster. Instead, the rookies led a strong, opportunistic defensive performance that helped the Giants achieve a 19-7 upset victory. The rookies were Carl Banks, 22 years old, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 235 pounds and a first-round draft choice, on the left outside, and Gary Reasons, 22, 6-4, 234 and a fourth-round choice, on the left inside. Banks was there because Andy Headen was injured, Reasons because Joe McLaughlin had not been playing well.

The revival of the Democratic Presidential campaign after last Sunday's debate has apparently dimmed the prospects for major Republican gains in the House of Representatives, according to strategists in both parties. By his strong performance in the televised contest, Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic nominee, altered the dynamics of the Congressional battle by energizing Democratic activists and forcing President Reagan to concentrate on his own race. This led Representative Tony Coelho of Calilfornia, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to declare that the ''big winners'' in the debate were Democratic candidates for the House. G.O.P Landslide Held Less Likely Republican strategists still hope to recapture enough momentum by Nov. 6 to alter the balance of power in the House, where Democrats are now in control. But the Republicans are playing down talk of a landslide, and conceding that the Democrats show new signs of life.

Negotiators for the Ford Motor Company and the United Automobile Workers reached agreement on a new labor contract this morning. Also today, union officials said a pact with the General Motors Corporation had been ratified by 57 percent of the rank and file. The tentative agreement with Ford came after a continuous 24-hour bargaining session. It was reached almost two days after an informal deadline set for noon Friday and closely parallels the accord reached last month at General Motors, officials of both sides said.

Voluntarism, Japan has learned, is contagious in international trade. Within two months of Japan's reluctant decision on May 1, 1981, to limit automobile exports to the United States, arm-twisters from Canada, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands all had extracted similar ''voluntary'' agreements from Japan. These so-called voluntary controls - which have been compared to volunteering in the Army - may again proliferate if the world economy fails to show more zip. Inspired in part by President Reagan's decision to seek restraint from foreign steel producers, other countries are expected to turn to voluntary quotas.

A subordinate headline with an article on the Style page Sept. 29 about indoor pollution was incorrect. Sealed office buildings add to the problem of pollution, but better insulation does not.

On its face, the trade bill approved by Congress makes protection of domestic steelmakers contingent on their spending to modernize plants and retrain workers. If President Reagan signs the bill, as he is expected to do, the Government will be committed, in a limited way, to a national industrial policy, coordinating government policy with private business decisions. Mr. Reagan has repeatedly stated his philosophical opposition to such a policy; Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic presidential candidate, supports one. But there may be less to the steel ''industrial policy'' than meets the eye. 'A Nice Political Gesture' ''It's no more than a nice political gesture,'' said Robert G. Maloney, an analyst at Wood Gundy Inc., a Wall Street investment firm. ''They are already doing more than required, but that's not hard since they've been losing money and don't have much cash flow.''

''In the rain, New Yorkers will get into anything.'' - Andrew Fellman, taxi driver. (B1:6.)

Twenty years ago tonight, some time between 9 and 11, workmen removed a huge portrait of Nikita S. Khrushchev from the facade of the Moskva Hotel near Red Square, and the man who had led the Soviet Union for more than a decade slipped quietly into official oblivion. The only Soviet leader to be removed from office, Khrushchev was recalled the day before from a vacation at his Black Sea villa near the town of Gagra and read out of the leadership at a sometimes abrasive meeting of the Communist Party Presidium. On Oct. 14, 1964, Leonid I. Brezhnev succeeded him in the top post of party First Secretary, and Aleksei N. Kosygin was named Prime Minister, inaugurating a turn toward a low-key style of leadership that has continued, in contrast to Khrushchev's flamboyant style, ever since. From Kremlin to Dacha Khrushchev was sent into retirement at a modest dacha outside Moscow where, according to his biographer, the historian Roy Medvedev, he spent his first weeks in a state of shock. A grandson of Khrushchev, asked by his headmaster how the former Soviet leader passed his time, was quoted by Mr. Medvedev as saying, ''Granddad cries.''

Two leading Salvadoran rebel officials flew to El Salvador today, ending, at least temporarily, more than four years of political exile and setting the stage for a meeting Monday with President Jose Napoleon Duarte. The officials, Guillermo Manuel Ungo and Ruben Zamora, are the two top representatives of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, the political wing of the rebel opposition. They landed at El Salvador's main airport at Comalapa, about 20 miles southeast of the capital of San Salvador, in a Colombian Air Force plane shortly before 12:30 P.M. They were accompanied on the flight from Panama by foreign diplomats. ''For the two of us, this is a day of profound, great satisfaction,'' Mr. Ungo said. ''We came here with hopes, with the disposition and the will to start a dialogue that will carry us to negotiations to win peace for our homeland.''

By using all of banking's electronic and marketing innovations, and inventing a few of its own, the First Interstate Bancorporation has hung its sign above more retail branches than any other bank in the country. That was the easy part: Now it faces the formidable task of welding the disparate parts. ''We've gotten to the awareness stage,'' said Joseph J. Pinola, the company's chairman. ''The next stage is the anxiety stage.'' First Interstate's search for the future of banking has led it into new corners of the banking map and, because there is a legal barrier to banks crossing state lines, to a concept better- known in fast food than banking - franchising. From its base here, it has franchised its name as far east as Sheboygan, Wis., and across the West from Alaska and Hawaii to New Mexico and Colorado.