factories

The 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan took quite the toll on the automotive industry in that nation. Not content to lean on that tragedy as excuse for slagging sales, the Japanese automakers are planning on a major production expansion in North America. The aim is to reclaim the ...

Trying to make the best of a nasty situation for everyone involved, Opel has reportedly worked out an agreement with its Works Council and the IG Metall union to reduce working hours at two of its plants. From the end of September until the end of the year, there will be 20 days of short shifts ...

With all of the factories that General Motors is closing down and the brands being eliminated, there has been plenty of bad news for GM's blue collar staff over the past year. This week, there was finally a bit of good news as three factories got word that they would add third shifts in the ...

BMW invaded the South in 1993, and it's first U.S.-made product was popped out in September a year later. Fifteen years after that there have been five factory expansions, 5,000 jobs created, a methane gas pipeline installed, a center for automotive research created, a golf tournament started, ...

Among those clamoring for attention and payouts from Motors Liquidation Co., the company that assumed General Motors' unwanted assets after its Chapter 11 filing, are the environmental and economic redevelopment departments of state governments. According to reports, when GM exited bankruptcy, ...

Sometimes deals get made, and then the dealmakers have to employ some pretty creative tactics to get the terms to work. Magna's deal for Opel included taking €1.5 billion in short term loans from the German government, the string attached being that Magna had to guarantee German jobs.Saving ...

As reported recently, even though Toyota halted Tundra production for a while, the company pledged not to lay off its workers. At a total cost of potentially $1 billion to the company, Toyota instead placed the employees in retraining and civic works programs during a Kaizen and Development ...

Giveth, and taketh away, isn't that always the story? On the taketh away side, GM has recently lost a serious chunk of change. On the giveth side, The General received a $56 milion package of tax credits and grants to keep an SUV factory open in Ohio. It has also just received another package of ...

VW hasn't yet publicly committed to building one or even two factories in the U.S. (though it's apparently considering the South, specifically South Carolina), but is making statements that sound like it's definitely on the way. VW's head of production, Jochem Heizmann, has said that the ...

Ford's recent Q2 good news shows that it's making progress in cleaning up its own messes. Still, there are plenty of messes that need to be addressed -- a literal one being the land under its Twin Cities production plant in Highland Park, Minnesota. The factory, in use since 1925, will be closed ...

Mercedes has been offering factory delivery of its cars since the fifties, and today more than 80,000 folks are handed their new Mercedes fobs right at the plant. One of the top tourist attractions in Germany is VW's Autostadt, which gets more than a million visitors per year. Now BMW has joined ...

How's this for a wake-up call on the state of the dollar: "If the dollar keeps slumping against the euro, the United States could become the next Mexico -- a low-cost manufacturing haven for European automakers and suppliers." With the dollar at $1.38 to the euro as of now, and expecting to drop ...

So Acura won't be making it to Japan just yet, and the new NSX has been delayed until at least 2010, but parent company Honda is not slowing down for anything. Company President Takeo Fukui is determined not to let Honda get left behind in the battle for global automotive supremacy. In the name ...

There have been periodic rumors of a United States assembly plant for Volvo cars since at least the early 1980s. There was a North American construction arm of the Swedish carmaker, situated in Nova Scotia, but that plant has been shuttered for several years now. Volvo CEO Fredrik Arp has told ...