Word: trucks
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...lament echoes across the $339 billion Japanese auto industry, which finds itself running low on gas. The industry accounts for 10% of Japan's overall economy; thus its falling fortunes are a major factor in a deepening recession. Domestic car and truck sales are down 13% from the 1990 peak of 7.7 ( million vehicles, and profits for the five biggest carmakers -- Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi and Mazda -- are off about 64% from the same year. Some of the smaller companies, like Isuzu, have been in the red for two years and may soon be joined by the likes of Nissan...
...smaller firms suffering the heaviest impact. Their emergency measures include reductions in product lines, severe cost cutting, mergers with other automakers and drastic rethinking of business practices. In mid-December, sixth-ranked Isuzu announced that it was getting out of the passenger-car business to concentrate on its truck business. Second-ranked Nissan is slowly absorbing ninth-ranked Fuji Heavy Industries, the parent of ailing Subaru...
...attempt to inflate prices overseas to offset weak profits at home have made Japanese vehicles more expensive in the U.S. A mid-priced American-built car now typically costs $1,500 less than its Japanese counterpart. Another factor is that Japanese companies are weak in the light-truck category, where such vehicles as Dodge pickups and the Ford Explorer are driving off with the lion's share of a market niche that grew more than 18% last year, to 4.5 million vehicles...
...carmakers. Honda is out in front in that race with its new Domani, a small family car that is 60% built with parts also used in other Honda models; previously the shared-component segment amounted to 10% to 15%. The carmakers are also considering a method already used by truck manufacturers: standardization of certain components, which allows parts companies to cut their prices. Zexel, a major high-tech partsmaker based in Tokyo, expects to get seven manufacturers to agree to a common fuel injector for their diesel vehicles. The risk of commonization is that if taken too far, it could...
Marine talk drifts back and forth. Sergeant Darrell Siler's face twitches when someone mentions the Oct. 23, 1983, truck-bomb attack in Lebanon that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Had he not been on leave that day, Siler would probably have been killed with his buddies. "There's a lot of places in Mogadishu that remind me of Beirut," he says. His voice cracks. "I hope nothing like that ever happens here. Our rules of engagement are different. There we couldn't fire unless we were fired on, and we had to get permission first. Here we can use deadly...