Word: saturn
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...Detroit by deciding first to join them. In addition to importing autos from Japanese manufacturers, Smith has taken the unprecedented step of creating a joint venture with Toyota to build a small car in California. He further shocked the unwary by establishing a separate company to produce the subcompact Saturn, which will bear GM's first new nameplate since the Pontiac was introduced in 1926. Saturns will start rolling off the assembly line in two years...
Smith views Saturn, which was formally unveiled last January, as a showcase of automotive innovation. The car, which will be built by a newly created company, is a leading example of "intrapreneurship" -- the practice by which large firms give employees freedom and financial backing to pursue their ideas. Declares Smith: "We expect to achieve tremendous efficiencies in Saturn through the use of leading-edge technologies and new business and management systems so advanced they don't exist anywhere in the world, not even in Japan." The four-cylinder car will be built in preassembled sections on highly automated lines...
...Saturn project has triggered a frantic bidding war among states for the 6,000-worker plant that GM will build to assemble the car. In all, 25 Governors, including Mario Cuomo of New York and James Thompson of Illinois, have made pilgrimages to GM in hopes of getting the facility for their states. The scramble has become a distraction and something of an embarrassment to GM, which hopes to pick a location this summer...
While the Saturn project was being planned, Smith's high-tech talent scouts were continuing their hunt for acquisitions. Hughes Aircraft was an early favorite. Considered a rival to Bell Laboratories as an electronics developer, Hughes was precisely the type of company that Smith sought. "They are a storehouse of technology," he says. "Hughes' single biggest asset is its brainpower and teamwork." But Hughes coveted its independence and initially spurned GM. The rebuff turned the automaker toward Electronic Data Systems, a Dallas-based computer-services firm that Founder H. Ross Perot had built into the largest company in its field...
Irritated by the hoopla surrounding Saturn, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca decided last week to challenge GM to a race. At a dinner in Detroit attended by Wall Street investment analysts, he vowed that Chrysler will beat the Saturn to the showrooms with a similar small car called the Liberty. While Iacocca's statement created a stir in Detroit, it did not generate much excitement in state capitals. Reason: Chrysler may build the Liberty abroad, possibly in South Korea...