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[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 05:08:52PM -0500, zman wrote:
> ... Next thing you'll be telling me is front wheel drive is an
> advantage. The only advantage is it cost them less to make your car,
> they can make the entire drivetrain in one piece.

While I don't know much about the economics of front wheel drive, I will
say this - when I was an underemployed liberal arts graduate working off
my credit debt back in 1992-3, I worked for a German company called
Lemforder in Brewer, Maine. We used a French injection molding machine
to coat with plastic the shaft splines of sheering shaft components
assembled from Brazilian parts, using Venezualan light oil, plastic
universal joint seats from Spain, universal joints from Mexico, bearings
from the US, and so on, to build steering shaft components. Like this
one:

 http://hesketh.com/schampeo/gifs/steering.gif

The components were sent on to a plant in Indianapolis, where they were
assembled into steering shafts that were packed in grease and sent to
either France, to be assembled by Belgian workers, or Belgium, to be
assembled by French workers. I forget. The shaft components we made went
into Ford Taurus, Mercury Topaz, and another Ford that was only sold in
the UK.

I remember being pretty impressed at how global everything was. So much
for "America's car", though.

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