Word: bmw
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...wheels are too big, they can screw up the power steering or transmission. Hence the industry's slow shift to 17-in. rims. Over the past two years, shipments to automakers of 17-in. tires have risen 9%, while shipments of 15-inchers have fallen nearly 12%. Even BMW's pint-size Mini Cooper comes with optional 17-in. wheels...
...gadgets continue to be rolled out, manufacturers are concerned about the balance between offering drivers features and overwhelming them. Last year BMW debuted its $68,000 745i with iDrive, a silver dial coupled with a small screen that a driver can use to do everything from saving radio presets to activating the seat warmers. The system was widely panned. Car and Driver dubbed it "a lunatic attempt to replace intuitive controls with overwrought silicon...
...Audi A8 L, available June 12, may have benefited from BMW's mistake. While it features a similar, joystick-like knob, it's supplemented with manual buttons you can push when you get tired of wading through the onscreen menus. Still, we encountered some problems in our test drive. The navigation system routinely directed us to take the least convenient route to our destination. And the trunk door popped open all by itself on two separate occasions after we left...
...here's the mystery: if foreign-based companies like Nissan--along with BMW, Honda and Toyota--are building more vehicles in American factories, using American workers and American suppliers, and selling the vehicles to Americans for a good profit, why aren't DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors doing the same? Last year the Big Three collectively lost money on car sales in North America (and earned a mere 1.8% profit on overall sales). Honda and Nissan earned higher margins and record profits, and Toyota is expected to post similar results...
...additional 1 million vehicles. Hyundai is building a plant in Montgomery, Ala.--the first Korean auto-assembly factory in the U.S.--to make Sonata sedans and Santa Fe SUVs. Mercedes-Benz (owned by DaimlerChrysler, based in Stuttgart, Germany) is doubling capacity at its SUV facility in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And BMW recently expanded its plant in Spartanburg, S.C., where lines run overtime to produce Z4 roadsters and X5 SUVs. Detroit's automakers are by no means sitting still, as we'll see, but the additional transplant capacity can only make their challenge harder. "The Big Three are less in denial than...