Word: honda
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...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...
These advantages have been accruing since 1983, when the first transplant factories, built by Honda and Nissan, began producing sedans in Marysville, Ohio, and Smyrna, Tenn., respectively. But if the stakes were high then, they're even higher now. The Big Three's overall North American market share slipped to 61.7% last year, an all-time low, and it has declined an additional 1.6 points in the first quarter of 2003. Toyota is just a couple of market-share points from passing Chrysler, the smallest of the Big Three. Though it is narrowing the quality gap, Detroit today squeezes almost...
Chrysler, Ford and GM take an average of eight more hours to make a vehicle at their North American plants than do Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Nissan is fastest at 18 hours a vehicle, and Chrysler (the U.S.-based unit of DaimlerChrysler) is slowest at 31 hours, according to the Harbour Report, an annual productivity guide. These times translate into an extra expense of $300 to $500 a vehicle for the Big Three as compared with the transplants, which in a tough market can kill already slim profit potential...
...When I ask to see some of his earlier films, he insists on taking me to a cinema in the heart of the city to watch the films on the big screen. As we pick our way through the Trivandrum traffic in his boxy Honda, chasing down a couple of spare prints, Adoor decries "the bankruptcy of mainstream Indian cinema"; he quite proudly states that he almost never watches popular Indian films - except occasionally on TV, where "the commercials actually come as a welcome relief." Adoor's own preferences still run toward the aging European masters who first inspired...
...that when American Combat Engineers got ready to blow up the statue of Saddam in the An Najaf city center, two-dozen fighters calling themselves "the Coalition for Iraqi National Unity" were on hand. They rode into the square in on top of heavily armed Special Forces Honda trucks, full of smiles and waving to anyone with a camera. Throughout the day they were only too glad to pose for pictures in their newly issued equipment while brandishing AK-47's, often begging to be photographed. They all professed to wanting Saddam dead and shouted their willingness to fight...