Word: smarted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
With outside providers supplying more and more of the finished product, auto assemblers talk a lot about core competencies these days, which essentially means defining what a company does best and then focusing energy on that activity. For the Smart Car, Mercedes made sure it kept the engine design to itself, while the chassis is that of a Mercedes A-class sedan. The car's styling comes largely from SMH Automotive, the Swiss company that uses modular design to make Longines and Swatch watches (Smart, in fact, stands for Swatch-Mercedes art). SMH owned 19% of MCC until Daimler-Benz...
...principles, there was value in that exercise as well. You learn more about the views you hold when you're forced to defend them. Tom DeLay tried to frame the debate as a choice between relativism and absolute truths, but there were subtler arguments advanced by both sides. Smart virtuecrats like Bill Bennett argued that a leader who occasionally drank in the evenings was not impeachable, but one who drank before deciding on troop deployments maybe was. White House officials agonized in private over which was worse: that Clinton lied to them or that he failed to apologize...
...exactly PT-109. When J.F.K. was gearing up for his 1960 presidential run, the Kennedys spread the story of his bravery in the Pacific, not his conquests in Georgetown. But that was when smart candidates wanted charisma. Now they want cover, which, oddly enough, requires them to make pre-emptive strikes on themselves. In the aftermath of the White House scandal, it's a good bet that "youthful indiscretions" will get you more press than anything you say about school vouchers. Will voters care? If the past year teaches anything, it's that, up to a point still undefined, they...
...while restricting sales of some things it wants to buy. "If you sell us high-technology products, we will pay you royalties," he said, but warned that if we refuse to sell such products to China, it will buy them elsewhere or build them itself. "The Chinese are very smart. On our own, we developed the hydrogen and atom bombs. If you refuse to sell us satellites and other new high-tech products, we may be able to develop them by ourselves. And then we won't have to purchase yours...