Word: kogyo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their increasingly successful invasion of the U.S. auto market, Japanese automakers have so far relied on low production costs and prices to win American customers. Now Hiroshima-based Toyo Kogyo Co. Ltd., Japan's fourth largest car manufacturer, is challenging Detroit with fresh technology. In Washington, Florida and Texas, the company has quietly begun selling two compact models equipped with German-designed Wankel engines, which generate twice as much horsepower per pound of weight as conventional piston engines. In California, where Toyo Kogyo will introduce its Mazdas next month, auto dealers have sized up the car as such...
Like a Jack Rabbit. Technical difficulties slowed acceptance of the Wankel. Toyo Kogyo paid West Germany's Audi NSU $12 million in the early '60s for rights to the engine, spent seven years and $20 million improving its performance. The most crucial problem, devising a tight but long-lasting seal at the three apexes of the rotor, was solved by substituting a carbon alloy for the cast-iron tip used in German models. The original Wankel engines belched clouds of smoke, so Toyo Kogyo built a 40-lb. "thermal-reactor" afterburner to oxidize the exhaust and attached...
...Toyo Kogyo started commercial production of Wankel-powered autos in 1967, and last year turned out 66,000 of them-more than twice as many as Audi NSU has built since the engine was invented. Only 1,360 rotary-engined Mazdas have been sold in the U.S. so far, but the company expects to snare 10,000 U.S. customers this year. Though the interiors seem cramped, the Mazdas are not cheap: $2,495 for the R-100 and $2,800 for the larger, more powerful RX-2. Their appeal lies in jackrabbit speed and smooth riding. The Mazda can accelerate...
...years for the right to use the German engine. Auto experts figure that G.M. will probably aim at producing a Wankel-powered compact, perhaps smaller than today's Vega, within three or four years. Taking a different approach, Ford is dickering to buy a 20% share of Toyo Kogyo, partly because the No. 2 U.S. automaker is interested in the Wankel engine and partly because the company wants a share of the domestic Japanese car market. How fast Wankel autos will catch on in the U.S. remains to be seen, but all the jockeying for position certainly increases...
...exhibit at Osaka. Paternalism and lifetime employment are still features of Japanese corporations, and Taiyo Kogyo keeps Nakatani happy with a six-month salary bonus every year and a new-car loan every two years. Corporate entertainment allowances total $2 billion a year in Japan, and Nakatani spends a good chunk of his $1,600 share taking foreign customers to geisha parties. But he is not a kimono chaser. That tradition is beginning to fade, albeit slowly, as Japan's women become more assertive...