Word: auto
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When it was unveiled at auto shows in 1988, the Magna Torrero's hybrid design turned heads in auto-company boardrooms from Detroit to Tokyo. But it never got a chance to tear up pavement like a Lotus Elise. Instead, parts of the Canadian company's prototype car are quietly helping Ford Contours, Volkswagen Golfs and Audi A8s roll comfortably down driveways around the world. "People keep asking us when Magna is going to manufacture our own car," company spokesman Paul Pivato says, "and the answer is never. We are not a carmaker...
That playful look--dreamed up by DaimlerChrysler and the folks who brought you the Swatch watch--is part of a "visible technology" motif that tries to make a fashion statement out of one of the biggest changes to hit the auto industry since Henry Ford started making flywheel magnetos on a moving assembly line in 1913. The car industry, like the computer and consumer-electronics industries before it, is going modular, and the percentage of a car that is actually manufactured by traditional car companies is getting smaller and smaller as a result. More and more of the cars...
...company was focused on the ground: it gradually began offering more and more components to the auto industry, from visor brackets to complete roof systems. As the order books bulged, so did Stronach's paycheck--by 1987 he had become Canada's highest-paid executive. Around that time, Magna's engineers developed the Torrero from the company's components inventory to drive home a point: it's not the parts that matter; it's how they fit together that counts. Dennis Blommers, a plant manager for Magna's Decoma division, which specializes in exterior systems, has been along for much...
...went. Nuccio's performance as Voltaire himself, Dr. Pangloss, Cacambo and Martin wowed the audience. One of Nuccio's most memorable numbers is in the angrily energetic "Auto Da Fe" (riot), when he, playing Dr. Pangloss, sings about how he contracted a virus most resembling syphilis in an attempt to save himself from execution for heresy. At several points he breaks into a curious Russian dance, the ensemble matching his energy and spirit as they kick and push him towards one of the black poles, set up as a gallows. Not only is the song about his contraction...
STRENGTHS Well-designed auto, travel, news sites; Windows still rules the desktop...