Automakers: Page 424

Steel Turns Green

This month, workers at the Curtis Screw Co. in Buffalo, NY, will begin machining a part for Ford Motor Co. using a new unleaded "green steel." Bob Squier, president of Curtis, calls it a significant development for the industry because the new steel helps bring a truly environmentally friendly car closer to reality.Curtis is one of the largest screw machine parts suppliers to Detroit and a member

By Herb Shuldiner • Aug. 1, 1999

Risky Business--Automakers patiently wait out Brazil’s woes

Brazil still may be suffering from economic hiccups these days, but no one is giving the patient up for dead. In fact, Brazil has had fewer bankruptcies and business closings than predicted, even as it struggles with its deepest recession since the early 1990s.Insiders will tell you that Brazil's history - and possibly its future - is full of high interest rates and repeated recessions. It does give

By Andrea Wielgat • July 1, 1999

Explore the Trendline➔

Artificial Intelligence

Automakers and dealers alike are increasingly seeing the use case for AI within their operations. Explore some use cases in this trendline.

By WardsAuto staff

Ford’s Carlos Mazzorin: ‘Prices come down as the technology improves’

Q - The auto industry has pretty much gone to sharing warranty work with suppliers to push those costs down. But what about the dealers? They love warranty work.A - That's very relative because the higher your warranty cost, the more unsatisfied the customer is. For the dealer, the No.1 objective is a satisfied customer that will come in and buy a car. You will only go so many times to fix your car

July 1, 1999

Saturn Grows Up--Adding midsizer extends Saturn into 41% of the market

SCOTTSDALE, AZ - For nine years now, Saturn Corp. has been producing essentially the same underpowered 4-cyl. subcompact.The marketing's been great; the cars, so far, not earth-shattering. But they've sold 2 million of these plastic-paneled icons and in the process have taught General Motors Corp. and its fellow automakers around the world a thing or two about manufacturing processes, worker and customer

By Mike Arnholt • July 1, 1999

Satellite Radio: the Auto Industry’s Space Race

The competition between two East Coast-based companies hoping to be the first to market with a groundbreaking convenience item boils down to a blast off sometime in 2000. The payload: satellites that will beam down to cars and trucks up to 100 channels of audio entertainment.XM Satellite Radio of Washington and CD Radio Inc. of New York, which won the two licenses offered by the Federal Communications

By Brian Corbett • July 1, 1999

Mazda Hopes MPV Will Move Sales

KESWICK, VA - Ferrying our Mazda minivans in pairs across the picturesque James River on a raft nudged along by men with long poles, we are steeped in historic scenery. In one direction sits Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson. In another, Appomattox Court House, where Lee's surrender to Grant ended a horrific civil war and determined the fate of the fledgling nation.Later, as we back our vehicles

By Barbara McClellan • July 1, 1999

Pontiac Aztek SUV Hits Streets in ‘01

Pontiac has decided to jump on the small sport/utility vehicle (SUV) circuit as early as 2001 with its Aztek concept that it teased viewers with at the Detroit auto show last January.The sport wagon/SUV has been in General Motors Corp.'s Validation Center in Pontiac, MI, for at least two months. Using the Aztek's body-in-white design, workers have been validating body shop equipment that will be used

July 1, 1999

GM’s Harold Kutner:--‘There’s nothing in this game for free.’

Q - Is the next great frontier in terms of savings in the supply chain still in the area of logistics?A - I think probably the next frontier is a result of e-commerce types of initiatives. The way we market vehicles, and the instant gratification from the e-commerce customer in the next century is going to drive a different paradigm into the supplier ranks. What I'm talking about is suppliers sensing

July 1, 1999

1999 Harbour Report

It's tough to stay on top. Just ask the Detroit Red Wings. They were eliminated early in this spring's NHL playoffs after winning two Stanley Cups back to back. So it should not be a surprise that after five years of being rated as the most productive auto assembly plant in North America by the influential Harbour Report, Nissan Motor Mfg. Corp. (NMMC) in Smyrna, TN, is ceding its crown to another.What

By Drew Winter • July 1, 1999

The Mating Game

If you're expecting to see more automakers getting hitched, you're not alone. About two-thirds of supplier respondents (67%) and 80.6% of OEM respondents say they expect more tieups among major OEMs.There is less consensus, however, as to whether OEM consolidations are good for suppliers. More than half of OEM participants (55.3%) say that recent deals (DaimlerChrysler, Ford-Volvo, Renault-Nissan)

July 1, 1999

Get Smart--Unigraphics system shaves weeks from die design

Changing a die design for a body panel stamping is difficult, expensive and an unfortunate way of life for some automakers.Unigraphics Solutions has an answer with its latest technology, Smart Model. The St. Louis-based company is the primary supplier of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing tools (CAD/CAM) to the world's largest automaker, General Motors Corp., and the world's largest

By Tom Murphy • July 1, 1999

Yellowstone Meets Death Valley--But GM and the UAW still need each other

Yellowstone was the name General Motors Corp. chose last year to describe its plan to build small cars profitably in new factories based on modular assembly.Yellowstone was the first, and still most famous, national park, spreading throughout three Western states.But you won't hear it mentioned anymore at GM. Nor any derivation of the word "module." They're as dead as the unearthly silence of Death

By David C. Smith • July 1, 1999

DaimlerChrysler’s Tom Sidlik: ‘We were the fat slovenly Americans’

Q - Have you discovered many efficiencies in combining the purchasing functions of your new company?A - There are a lot of good purchasing people on both sides of the Atlantic, and we need to work together to come up with a new and better way. We'll look back 10 years from now and say, "Boy those guys had a great opportunity." We've got a couple thousand people over in Stuttgart who look at the world

July 1, 1999

‘Co-Design Modularity’--GM’s small car solution

It must be painful for product planners weighing their options. On one hand is the small, practical car, sure to lose money because it is often priced for first-time buyers. On the other is a roomy, macho sport/utility vehicle (SUV) loaded with curb appeal and options that customers want, generating profits that can exceed the entire cost to buy a small car.What's an automaker to do? There is, in

By Tom Murphy • June 1, 1999

Fresh Perspective

The upcoming Tercel replacement, due to hit the U.S. market this fall as a '00 model, is the first in a raft of new cars aimed at drawing younger buyers back to Toyota showrooms. If it hits its targets, the high-content, low-priced Echo also could be one of the vehicles that breathes a little more life into the small-car market.Toyota made its mark in America by cultivating Baby Boomers in the '60s

By David E. Zoia • June 1, 1999

New Toyota Chief Has U. S. Credentials

Toyota Motor Corp.'s newly named president, Fujio Cho, 62, says his most memorable job was building Toyota's Georgetown, KY, plant from scratch."When I went to the United States, there was nothing," he tells a Japanese reporter. When he left Georgetown to return to Japan in 1994, employees gave him a 10-minute standing ovation. "They loved that man," says an associate who was there.Mr. Cho this month

By Barbara McClellan • June 1, 1999

GM Apologizes for the Cadillac of Lies

Losing isn't fun. But it can be done gracefully and without shame. At least a few people at the Cadillac Div. of General Motors Corp. needed to learn that lesson the hard way.The company has "disciplined" a number of employees (no word on how many) who manipulated December sales figures so that Cadillac would come from behind to beat Lincoln as the top luxury nameplate in the U.S. for 1998. GM isn't

June 1, 1999

No-Shows in Korea --Foreign makers sidestep Seoul auto show

SEOUL - A total boycott by foreign carmakers due to the small exhibition space offered them, at what they deemed an exorbitant price, leaves the Seoul Motor Show '99 with just three domestic auto manufacturer exhibits. Such a small showing of cars is almost unheard of in today's world of global automakers. But the market in Korea is anything but normal.In reality, there are just two Korean auto manufacturers,

By JOHN RETTIE • June 1, 1999

All-New Lincoln--Can LS establish luxury/sport ‘street credentials?’

They've had more than their share of delays and doubters, from those inside Ford Motor Co. as well as outsiders, but the widely trumpeted 2000 Lincoln LS sedans are pretty darn close to being what Ford promised they would be back when the sedan first broke cover at the 1998 New York auto show.Richard Parry-Jones, Ford's product development chief, and his team of engineers have expended enough effort

By SAID DEEP • June 1, 1999

Small in Stature, Big in the Market-Why automakers maintain their small-carfocus

Small cars have been bullied by the biggies, both in the revenue column and on the road, but they've been able to hold their own.Wildly robust truck and SUV sales make for good headlines - and fat profits - so much so that it sometimes appears automakers aren't concerned about anything else, least of all small cars. But automakers haven't been totally blinded by the short-term profits large trucks

By SAID DEEP • June 1, 1999

Ford’s C3P Moves Ahead

A few of my colleagues in the industry say we're crazy to undertake such a huge effort. It has never been done, and they say we won't be successful, but we'll be very glad to prove them wrong," Richard Riff, director of Ford Motor Co.'s C3P Project office told Ward's Auto World in the summer of 1996.Speaking recently at a major computer industry conference in Atlanta, Mr. Riff sounded very glad indeed

By Drew Winter • June 1, 1999

Alive and WellJIT thrives in its birthplace - Japan

TOYOTA CITY - If Toyota Motor Co. is rethinking the basics of "just-in-time" delivery at its North American plants - as some reports have indicated - it's hard to see evidence of it here in Japan.If anything, kanban, a form of "just-in-time" delivery particular to Japan, is likely to increase in importance as the industry shifts away from "mass production" of vehicles to "mixed production."Recent

By Roger Schreffler • May 1, 1999

JITWhen ASAP Isn’t Good Enough

It was a dark and stormy night a little over a year ago that caused the unthinkable.Toyota Motor Mfg., the auto industry's model of efficiency, had to shut down its Georgetown, KY, plant for nearly a day because an ice storm in the Midwest left roads unpassable. Indiana and Illinois were like an Arctic wasteland, and suppliers had no way to ship parts to Kentucky. Toyota's 8,000 employees got the

By Tom Murphy • May 1, 1999

Audi TT

Some 19 months after the Concept 1 debuted in Detroit, Audi launched the TT show car at the 1995 IAA Frankfurt show. Like Concept 1, it was a show-grabber. Again Mssrs. Mays and Thomas had conceived a hit, but this time the roles were reversed.Mr. Thomas lays out the history: "J. asked me to go to Germany to assist him (after he had been appointed as the new head of Audi design). I said 'No' at first,

May 1, 1999

Technology and the Merger Among Equals

Bernard Robertson, Auburn Hills' tech top dog, interprets DC's technology mantraBernard Robertson, DaimlerChrysler AG senior vice president of engineering technology, in April assumed the duties of Chris Theodore, senior vice president of platform engineering. Mr. Robertson now is DC's senior technical executive in the U.S. He speaks with WAW about the effect of executives leaving the company, how

By Bill Visnic • May 1, 1999