Cars

Mitsubishi

2012-01-04T05:48:00.000-08:00

The Mitsubishi Group (also known as the Mitsubishi Group of Companies or Mitsubishi Companies) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate comprising a range of autonomous businesses which share the Mitsubishi brand, trademark and legacy.

The Mitsubishi group of companies form a loose entity, the Mitsubishi Keiretsu, which is often referenced in Japanese and US media and official reports; in general these companies all descend from the zaibatsu of the same name. The top 25 companies are also members of the Mitsubishi Kin'yōkai, or "Friday Club", and meet monthly. In addition the Mitsubishi.com Committee exists to facilitate communication and access of the Mitsubishi brand through a portal web site.

The Mitsubishi company was first established as a shipping firm by Yatarō Iwasaki (1834–1885) in 1870. In 1873, its name was changed to Mitsubishi Shokai . The name Mitsubishi ( consists of two parts: "mitsu" meaning "three" and "hishi" (which becomes "bishi" under rendaku) meaning "water caltrop" (also called "water chestnut"), and hence "rhombus", which is reflected in the company's famous logo. It is also translated as "three diamonds".

Mitsubishi had been established in 1870, two years after the Meiji Restoration, with shipping as its core business. Its diversification was mostly into related fields. It entered into coal-mining to gain the coal needed for ships, bought a shipbuilding yard from the government to repair the ships it used, founded an iron mill to supply iron to the shipbuilding yard, started a marine insurance business to cater for its shipping business, and so forth. Later, the managerial resources and technological capabilities acquired through the operation of shipbuilding were utilized to expand the business further into the manufacture of aircraft and equipment. Similarly, the experience of overseas shipping led the firm to enter into a trading business.

The company bought into coal mining in 1881 by acquiring the Takashima mine and Hashima Island in 1890, using the production to fuel their extensive steamship fleet. They also diversified into shipbuilding, banking, insurance, warehousing, and trade. Later diversification carried the organization into such sectors as paper, steel, glass, electrical equipment, aircraft, oil, and real estate. As Mitsubishi built a broadly based conglomerate, it played a central role in the modernization of Japanese industry.

The merchant fleet entered into a period of diversification that would eventually result in the creation of three entities:

Volvo

2011-12-30T06:24:00.000-08:00

AB Volvo is a Swedish builder of commercial vehicles, including trucks, buses and construction equipment. Volvo also supplies marine and industrial drive systems, aerospace components and financial services. Although Volvo was incorporated in 1915 as a subsidiary of AB SKF, a Swedish ball bearing manufacturer, the auto manufacturer considers itself officially founded on 14 April 1927, when the first car, the Volvo ÖV 4 series, affectionately known as "Jakob", rolled out of the factory in Hisingen, Gothenburg.

Volvo means "I roll" in Latin, conjugated from "volvere", in relation to ball bearing. The name Volvo was originally registered in May 1911 as a separate company within SKF AB and as a registered trademark with the intention to be used for a special series of ball bearing, but this idea was only used for a short period of time and SKF decided to use "SKF" as the trademark for all its bearing products.

In 1924, Assar Gabrielsson, a SKF Sales Manager, and Engineer Gustav Larson, the two founders, decided to start construction of a Swedish car. Their vision was to build cars that could withstand the rigors of Sweden's rough roads and cold temperatures. This has become a feature of Volvo products ever since.

The company AB Volvo had no activities until 10 August 1926, after one year of preparations involving the production of ten prototypes, was set up to carry out the car-manufacturing business within the SKF group. AB Volvo was introduced at the Stockholm stock exchange in 1935 and SKF then decided to sell its shares in the company. Volvo was delisted from NASDAQ in June 2007, but remains listed on the Stockholm exchange.

In 1999, Volvo sold its car division Volvo Cars to Ford Motor Company for $6.45 billion. The Volvo trademark was shared between Volvo AB, where it is used on heavy vehicles, and the unit of Ford, where it was used on cars. Volvo stopped posting profits in 2005 and in 2008, Ford decided to sell its interest in Volvo Cars; in August 2010, Ford completed its sale of Volvo to the parent of Chinese motor manufacturer Geely Automobile for $1.8 billion.

The Volvo Group has its origin in 1927 when the first Volvo car rolled off the production line at the factory in Gothenburg. Only 280 cars were built that year. The first truck, the "Series 1", debuted in January 1928, as an immediate success and attracted attention outside the country. In 1930, Volvo sold 639 cars, and the export of trucks to Europe started soon after; the cars did not become well-known outside Sweden until after World War II.

Marine engines have been part of the Group almost as long as trucks. Pentaverken, founded in 1907, was acquired in 1935. As early as 1929, however, the U-21 outboard engine was introduced. Manufacturing continued until 1962.

In early models, Volvos have also been known to explode due to the engine being too close to the gas tank and igniting the tank. This myth was very popular during 1940s.

The first bus, named B1, was launched in 1934, and aircraft engines were added to the growing range of products at the beginning of the 1940s. In 1963, Volvo opened the Volvo Halifax Assembly plant, the first assembly plant in the company’s history outside of Sweden in Halifax, Canada.

On 28 January 1999 Volvo Group sold its business area Volvo Car Corporation to the Ford Motor Company for US$6.45 billion, with the resulting group largely set on commercial vehicles. Volvo Cars was then sold to China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in 2010. On 2 January 2001, Renault Véhicules Industriels (which included Mack Trucks, but not Renault's stake in Irisbus) was sold to Volvo, which renamed it Renault Trucks in 2002. As a result, former mother company Renault is AB Volvo's biggest shareholder with a 20% stake (in shares and voting rights).

The last ten years the company has undergone rapid growth in the service area with, for example, financial solutions supporting the sales of the manufacturing business units. In 2006, AB Volvo acquired from Nissan Motor Co Ltd, 13% of the shares in the Japanese truck manufacturer UD Trucks former Nissan Diesel, and became major shareholder. In 2007 the Volvo Group took complete ownership of Nissan Diesel to extend its expansion in the Asian pacific market.

Ford

2011-12-24T13:13:00.000-08:00

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK. Ford's former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata Motors of India in March 2008. In 2010 Ford sold Volvo to Geely Automobile. Ford discontinued the Mercury brand after the 2011 model year.

Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines. Henry Ford's methods came to be known around the world as Fordism by 1914.

Ford is the second largest automaker in the U.S. and the fifth-largest in the world based on annual vehicle sales in 2010. At the end of 2010, Ford was the fifth largest automaker in Europe. Ford is the eighth-ranked overall American-based company in the 2010 Fortune 500 list, based on global revenues in 2009 of $118.3 billion. In 2008, Ford produced 5.532 million automobiles and employed about 213,000 employees at around 90 plants and facilities worldwide. During the automotive crisis, Ford's worldwide unit volume dropped to 4.817 million in 2009. In 2010, Ford earned a net profit of $6.6 billion and reduced its debt from $33.6 billion to $14.5 billion lowering interest payments by $1 billion following its 2009 net profit of $2.7 billion. Starting in 2007, Ford received more initial quality survey awards from J. D. Power and Associates than any other automaker. Five of Ford's vehicles ranked at the top of their categories and fourteen vehicles ranked in the top three.

BMW

2011-12-19T13:33:00.000-08:00

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) (English: Bavarian Motor Works) is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1917. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands. In 2010, the BMW group produced 1,481,253 automobiles and 112,271 motorcycles across all its brands.

BMW entered existence as a business entity following a restructuring of the Rapp Motorenwerke aircraft engine manufacturing firm in 1917. After the end of World War I in 1918, BMW was forced to cease aircraft engine production by the terms of the Versailles Armistice Treaty.The company consequently shifted to motorcycle production in 1923 once the restrictions of the treaty started to be lifted, followed by automobiles in 1928–29.

The first car which BMW successfully produced and the car which launched BMW on the road to automobile production was the Dixi, it was based on the Austin 7 and licensed from the Austin Motor Company in Birmingham, England.

The circular blue and white BMW logo or roundel is portrayed by BMW as the movement of an aircraft propeller, to signify the white blades cutting through the blue sky – an interpretation that BMW adopted for convenience in 1929, twelve years after the roundel was created.The emblem evolved from the circular Rapp Motorenwerke company logo, from which the BMW company grew, combined with the blue and white colours of the flag of Bavaria, reversed to produce the BMW roundel. However, the origin of the logo being based on the movement of a propeller is in dispute, according to an article posted in 2010 by the New York Times, quoting "At the BMW Museum in Munich, Anne Schmidt-Possiwal, explained that the blue-and-white company logo did not represent a spinning propeller, but was meant to show the colours of the Free State of Bavaria."

BMW's first significant aircraft engine was the BMW IIIa inline-six liquid-cooled engine of 1918, much preferred for its high-altitude performance. With German rearmament in the 1930s, the company again began producing aircraft engines for the Luftwaffe. Among its successful World War II engine designs were the BMW 132 and BMW 801 air-cooled radial engines, and the pioneering BMW 003 axial-flow turbojet, which powered the tiny, 1944-1945-era jet-powered "emergency fighter", the Heinkel He 162 Spatz. The BMW 003 jet engine was tested in the A-1b version of the world's first jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262, but BMW engines failed on takeoff, a major setback for the jet fighter program until successful testing with Junkers engines.

By the year 1959, the automotive division of BMW was in financial difficulties and a shareholders meeting was held to decide whether to go into liquidation or find a way of carrying on. It was decided to carry on and to try to cash in on the current economy car boom enjoyed so successfully by some of Germany's ex-aircraft manufacturers such as Messerschmitt and Heinkel. The rights to manufacture the Italian Iso Isetta were bought; the tiny cars themselves were to be powered by a modified form of BMW's own motorcycle engine. This was moderately successful and helped the company get back on its feet. The controlling majority shareholder of the BMW Aktiengesellschaft since 1959 is the Quandt family, which owns about 46% of the stock. The rest is in public float.

BMW acquired the Hans Glas company based in Dingolfing, Germany, in 1966. It was reputed that the acquisition was mainly to gain access to Glas' development of the timing belt with an overhead camshaft in automotive applications. Glas vehicles were briefly badged as BMW until the company was fully absorbed.

In 1992, BMW acquired a large stake in California based industrial design studio DesignworksUSA, which they fully acquired in 1995. In 1994, BMW bought the British Rover Group (which at the time consisted of the Rover, Land Rover and MG brands as well as the rights to defunct brands including Austin and Morris), and owned it for six years. By 2000, Rover was making huge losses and BMW decided to sell the combine. The MG and Rover brands were sold to the Phoenix Consortium to form MG Rover, while Land Rover was taken over by Ford. BMW, meanwhile, retained the rights to build the new Mini, which was launched in 2001.

Chief designer Chris Bangle announced his departure from BMW in February 2009, after serving on the design team for nearly seventeen years. He was replaced by Adrian van Hooydonk, Bangle's former right hand man. Bangle was known for his radical designs such as the 2002 7-Series and the 2002 Z4. In July 2007, the production rights for Husqvarna Motorcycles was purchased by BMW for a reported 93 million euros. BMW Motorrad plans to continue operating Husqvarna Motorcycles as a separate enterprise. All development, sales and production activities, as well as the current workforce, have remained in place at its present location at Varese.

Mercedes

2011-12-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

Mercedes was a brand of the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG). DMG which began to develop in 1900, after the death of its co-founder, Gottlieb Daimler. Although the name was not lodged as a trade name until 23 June 1902 and had to wait until 26 September to be registered legally, the brand name eventually would be applied to an automobile model built by Wilhelm Maybach to specifications by Emil Jellinek that was delivered to him on 22 December 1900. By Jellinek's contract, the new model contained a newly designed engine designated "Daimler-Mercedes". This engine name is the first instance of the use of the name, Mercedes, by DMG. The automobile model would later be called, the Mercedes 35 hp.

An Austrian diplomat based in Nice, a business man running a profitable business selling cars, and a racing enthusiast, Jellinek had been racing DMG automobiles under the pseudonym Mercédès, after his daughter, Mercédès Jellinek. Later he contracted with DMG for a small series of dedicated sports cars containing an engine that officially bore his daughter's name. He raced them very successfully, gaining recognition that increased interest in customers and Jellinek was placed on the board of directors of DMG. This model was a significant advancement in the history of automobiles. The model was released for sale in 1901 under the name of Mercedes 35 hp and, because of the success of the model, DMG began to apply the name as a series to other models such as, Mercedes 8/11 hp and Mercedes 40 hp Simplex. Jellinek seems to have become obsessed with the name and even had his name changed to Jellinek-Mercedes. Maybach quit DMG in 1907 and started up his own business.

The name, Mercedes, later was used to represent DMG in another new brand name, Mercedes-Benz, created in 1926 when it was applied to all vehicles produced by the new company, Daimler-Benz AG, resulting from the merger of Benz & Cie. and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in that year. The last name of Karl Benz was retained in the new brand, but since DMG had sold exclusive licences to foreign companies, they couldn't use the name of their founder, Daimler, legally in all countries and decided to use the name of their most popular model. Since Jellinek was a member of the board of directors by the time of the merger, the name was promoted for continued good luck to the new company.

Ferrari

2011-12-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, as Scuderia Ferrari, the company sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street-legal vehicles as Ferrari S.p.A. in 1947. Throughout its history, the company has been noted for its continued participation in racing, especially in Formula One, where it has had great success.

Enzo Ferrari never intended to produce road cars when he formed Scuderia Ferrari (literally "Ferrari Stable", and usually used to mean "Team Ferrari", it is correctly pronounced [skudeˈriːa]) in 1928 as a sponsor for amateur drivers headquartered in Modena. Ferrari prepared, and successfully raced, various drivers in Alfa Romeo cars until 1938, when he was hired by Alfa Romeo to head their motor racing department.

In 1941, Alfa Romeo was confiscated by the fascist government of Benito Mussolini as part of the Axis Powers' war effort. Enzo Ferrari's division was small enough to be unaffected by this. Because he was prohibited by contract from racing for four years, the Scuderia briefly became Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, which ostensibly produced machine tools and aircraft accessories. Also known as SEFAC (Scuderia Enzo Ferrari Auto Corse), Ferrari did in fact produce one race car, the Tipo 815, in the non-competition period. It was the first actual Ferrari car (it debuted at the 1940 Mille Miglia), but due to World War II it saw little competition. In 1943 the Ferrari factory moved to Maranello, where it has remained ever since. The factory was bombed by the Allies in 1944 and rebuilt in 1946, after the war ended, and included a works for road car production. Until Il Commendatore's death, this would remain little more than a source of funding for his racing operations.

The first Ferrari road car was the 1947 125 S, powered by a 1.5 L V12 engine; Enzo Ferrari reluctantly built and sold his automobiles to fund Scuderia Ferrari.

In 1988, Enzo Ferrari oversaw the launch of the Ferrari F40, the last new Ferrari to be launched before his death later that year, and arguably one of the most famous supercars ever made. From 2002 to 2004, Ferrari introduced the Enzo, its fastest model at the time, in honor of the company's founder: Enzo Ferrari. It was restricted to only the most wealthy automobile enthusiasts, however, as each one cost $1.8 million apiece.

On 17 May 2009 in Maranello, Italy, a 1957 250 Testa Rossa (TR) was auctioned, by RM Auctions and Sotheby's, for $12.1 million — a world record at that time for the most expensive car ever sold at an auction. That record is now held by a Bugatti Atlantic which sold for over $28 million.

Rolls-Royce

2011-12-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

"Rolls" redirects here. For other uses of "rolls" or "roll", see Roll.

Rolls-Royce is a British brand; it may refer to:

Rolls-Royce Limited, the original company founded in 1906, and split into Rolls-Royce plc and Rolls-Royce Motors in 1973
Rolls-Royce plc, the aerospace, power systems and defense company.
- Rolls-Royce Deutschland
- Rolls-Royce Marine Power Operations Ltd
- Rolls-Royce North America
- Rolls-Royce Corporation
- Rolls-Royce Turbomeca Ltd.
- Rolls-Royce AB, KaMeWa AB, then a part of Vickers plc
Rolls-Royce Motors, the car division comprising the Rolls-Royce and Bentley brands, separated from Rolls-Royce Limited in 1973. The company (now called Bentley Motors Limited) was acquired by Volkswagen in 1998, with the Rolls-Royce brand separately licensed (by Rolls-Royce plc) to BMW to establish a new car company (Rolls-Royce Motor Cars)
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, manufacturer of Rolls-Royce automobiles since 1999, a BMW subsidiary
List of Rolls-Royce motor cars a list of cars manufactured by Rolls-Royce Limited, Rolls-Royce Motors and Rolls-Royce Motor Car