Word: smyrna
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After 39 years as mayor of Smyrna, Tenn. (pop. 12,000), John Sam Ridley could hardly separate his personal business from the town's. He used his city credit card to visit a daughter in Texas, vacation in Florida and attend the Southern Baptist Convention, claiming that as mayor he was on duty 24 hours a day. He and his brother Knox, a former judge, owned Smyrna's Chevrolet dealership, which serviced cars for the city. A conflict-of-interest suit filed against Sam dragged on for seven years, through two of his re-elections. Then, facing an impending decree...
...Smyrna's dynasty survives. The five-member town commission took all of ten minutes to name Brother Knox to fill out the remaining 2 1/2 years of Sam's term. Said Knox: "Sam will be my right arm." Municipal policies will remain unchanged, and voters may not even notice that a new man is in charge: born 20 minutes apart 67 years ago, now with the same type eyeglasses and portly build, Sam and Knox are identical twins...
...Hilliard, a manufacturing engineer at the Japanese-owned Nissan truck plant in Smyrna, Tenn., has no doubt that the Japanese unfairly keep out American goods. Nissan has sent him to Japan three times for training, where, he reports, "I saw very few American products on the market there, whereas here Japanese products are all over the place." Consequently, he believes the "U.S. Government is justified" in placing restrictions on Japanese imports. Yet Hilliard has praise for the management methods of his employer. Nissan's profits in Smyrna are down, he says, because "parts from Japan cost much more than they...
Honda's rivals are only beginning to catch up. Nissan began building autos last year in Smyrna, Tenn., and Toyota is constructing a plant in Georgetown, Ky., that will start assembling vehicles in 1988. But Honda is not standing still either. The automaker began building engines at a separate plant near Marysville in July 1985. It is now gearing up a second Marysville assembly line that will increase the factory's U.S. production to 360,000 cars annually...
Toyota, Japan's leading auto producer, is the fourth Japanese carmaker to begin building some of its autos in the U.S. Honda paved the way in November 1982, when it opened a plant in Marysville, Ohio. Nissan started manufacturing cars in Smyrna, Tenn., this year, and Mazda is scheduled to open a plant in Flat Rock, Mich., in 1987. By 1989 Japanese companies are expected to be producing some 1 million cars a year in the U.S. The four American carmakers will turn out 7.9 million autos this year...