Mitsubishi throws in towel on fading era - Automotive News
's decision last week to sell its only U. S. assembly plant illustrates an emerging new-world order in car production. , plant was part of a wave of Asian-brand joint-venture auto plants in North America that opened in the 1980s and 1990s to do whatever was necessary to crack the all-important U. S. retail market. Mazda, Toyota, Subaru, Isuzu, Suzuki and, briefly, South Korea's Hyundai also opened North American joint-venture production lines in that era. The new reality: Auto production is increasingly shifting to more cost-efficient global platforms and world supply bases that serve multiple markets. Mitsubishi now finds itself competing not just against "built for U. S. consumption" auto ventures but against new-world strategies such as that of Mazda Motor Corp. Mazda once relied on a joint-venture with Ford Motor Co. in Flat Rock, Mich. , to sustain its U. S. sales, but it now has opened a Mexican car and engine complex that will serve as the global export base for all of its Mazda3 and Mazda2 production while also supplying small cars to Toyota. By comparison, Mitsubishi's Illinois factory, which opened in 1988 as a multimodel 50-50 Chrysler partnership that was capable of producing 240,000 cars a year, has been struggling as a Mitsubishi-only factory, although it built a few... Source: www.autonews.com
