Here in the passenger-car industry, the thought of buying a vehicle from one manufacturer and then specifying an
engine from another is almost unthinkable. Granted, upon further consideration, such an arrangement
could produce some highly entertaining results. Regardless, that’s exactly the way things have been done in the
heavy-truck industry, where the loyalty to a particular brand of engine is every bit as strong as – if not more
than – one’s affection for the chassis in which it’s placed.
Even as the passenger-car industry becomes less vertically integrated (witness transmission development and
manufacturing), the heavy-truck business has gone in the other direction, with chassis vendors bringing engine
development in-house. This could leave manufacturers such as Cummins and Caterpillar out in the cold. Cummins in
particular is said to be in potential trouble, as it doesn’t have its own line of off-highway equipment like
Caterpillar.
[Source: Reuters Asia]