Word: germans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...growing number of companies making ever larger and more complex parts of cars--like the metal-body exterior of BMW Z3 roadsters manufactured in the U.S., the instrument panel on the Jaguar XK8 and the passenger cell for the cute little Smart Car that German consumer Cerstin Stadeler was eyeing disapprovingly in Bonn. "It looks like one of those kid's toys that come in chocolate eggs," she says. "You know, the ones you snap together...
...years later he managed to start up a tool-and-die shop in a rented garage in downtown Toronto, and in 1960 he signed a contract with General Motors to produce sun-visor brackets for Chevrolets and Pontiacs. Over the following decade, Stronach pulled together a team of mostly German and Austrian tool-and-die workers to make more parts for more cars, and in 1970 he and some partners took over an aerospace-parts company called Magna Electronics Corp...
Micro Compact Car (MCC), the DaimlerChrysler subsidiary that assembles the Smart Car, has taken that idea further than any other company. Its plant in Hambach, France, is really seven separate factories, each occupied by a different systems partner. The chassis is shuffled off to a subfactory run by the German firm of Krupp Hoesch Automotive, where the power module is installed. Bosch plunks down the front end, which includes the cooler, headlights and crash box. German plastics, chemical and industrial-ceramics company Dynamit Nobel snaps on plastic body panels and the whole vehicle is done in four hours--down from...
...German auto-industry analyst Michael Schickling predicts that soon "there will be 10 to 15 assemblers worldwide, with a corresponding number of major systems suppliers, and the systems suppliers will keep buying and selling divisions as they define and redefine themselves." In the welter of change, the so-called systems partners are finally emerging from the shadows to become significant names in their own right. Perhaps one day they will start pitching their product directly to the public. Who knows, maybe "Auto by Magna" will replace old rubrics like "Body by Fisher...
...Behind the Music (Heinrich Smitt) "I was brought up by German expatriates on a ranch in Wyoming. On that ranch was a little studio that we kept in the toolshed . . . there was a lot of equipment, equipment that looked as if it would sever a limb. I spent a lot of my childhood in that studio, with my head in a vise as my poppy beat me with a cattle prod. A lot of the stuff that we produce today in these multi-million dollar studios, with all the fancy equipment, with the vises made of softest velvet, just...