Advances in vehicle maintenance have led to significant advances in its engineering applications in the past few decades. The advent of automation and electronics in automobiles has led vehicle maintenance and garage practice to emerge as a new discipline in automobile engineering. This book examines the underlying principles and best practices in diagnostic procedures, services, repairs and overhauling of vehicles. Key techniques and methods are described with the help of diagrams and images to make the book user-friendly and informative, enabling students to easily understand concepts. The text not only provides theoretical information, but also includes practical knowledge on vehicle maintenance and repair, emphasising the role and function of service stations. The book deals with both conventional and non-conventional methods of repairing and overhauling. Primarily designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students of automobile and mechanical engineering, the book is also useful for students studying for a diploma in automobile engineering. With its step-by-step explanation of repair procedures it can also be used as an automobile repair guide by vehicle owners.

This is the story of struggles against management regimes in the car industry in Britain from the period after the Second World War until the contemporary regime of lean production. Told from the viewpoint of the workers, the book chronicles how workers responded to a variety of management and union strategies, from piece rate working, through measured day work, and eventually to lean production beginning in the late 1980s. The book focuses on two companies, Vauxhall-GM and Rover/BMW, and how they developed their aroaches to managing labour relations. Worker responses to these are intimately tied to changing patterns of exploitation in the industry. The book highlights the relative success of various forms of struggle to establish safer and more humane working environments. The contributors bring together original research gathered over two decades, plus exclusive surveys of workers in four automotive final assembly plants over a ten year period.

Utilising the DaimlerChrysler human resources upgrade in one of South Africa's least developed provinces as the basis, this is a well-developed case study of the relationship between human capital in host economies and international capital inflows. It describes how DaimlerChrysler upgraded human resources in its East London plant where the company manufactures the Mercedes C-Class model for export. Lorentzen explores the extent and depth of the upgrading along and beyond the automotive supply chain, and its repercussions on local education and training institutions. Finally, he analyses how foreign direct investment and local industrial development interact in the short and medium term, and hypothesises as to the possible longer-term outcomes in the absence of proper regional economic planning.

In 1998, there was the latest in a long and complex history of takeovers that had bedevilled Rolls-Royce and Bentley since the companies were founded. This resulted in Volkswagen taking ownership of the factory in Crewe, together with the Bentley range and name, while BMW moved Rolls-Royce production to a new site in Sussex. On 30 August 2002, the last Crewe-built Rolls-Royce rolled off the production line, bringing the era of Crewe-built Rolls-Royces to an end. Peter Ollerhead, an ex-Rolls-Royce employee, has spent years researching the history of the company in Crewe, from 1938 to 1998, focusing on the endeavours and the experiences of its employees: this is a book about people. The detailed text, illustrated with over 80 photographs, explains how the initial establishment of a Merlin aero engine factory was thwarted by the problems of building on a greenfield site, where the early days of skill shortages, a chronic need for housing and a strike were followed by a bombing raid in 1940, in which seventeen employees were killed. The arrival of car production just after the Second World War is fully covered, as are the other enterprises that helped to keep the company afloat, from War Department power units to hip joints for the NHS. Despite a troubled history - with two major fires, bankruptcy and large-scale redundancies - Rolls-Royce was Crewe's largest employer for many years, produced the world's best luxury cars, and influenced and shaped the town as no other company has done. This book is a fitting tribute to the generations of workers who made it all possible.

Winner of the 2005 Business History Review Newcomen Award for best book in business history, The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation provides a fascinating historical overview of decision-making and political struggle within one of America's largest and most important corporations. Drawing on primary historical material, Robert Freeland examines the changes in General Motors' organization between the years 1924 and 1970. He takes issue with the well-known argument of business historian Alfred Chandler and economist Oliver Wiliamson, who contend that GM's multidivisional corporate structure emerged and survived because it was more efficient than alternative forms of organization. This book illustrates that for most of its history, GM intentionally violated the fundamental axioms of efficient organization put forth by these analysts. It did so in order to create cooperation and managerial consent to corporate policies. Freeland uses the GM case to re-examine existing theories of corporate governance, arguing that the decentralized organizational structure advocated by efficiency theorists may actually undermine cooperation, and thus foster organizational decline.

This book, the first ever based on unrestricted access to General Motors' internal records, documents the giant American corporation's dealings with the Third Reich. GM purchased Opel, Europe's largest automaker, in the 1920s and continued to hold it through the Second World War. Historian Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., uncovers the fascinating story of how the American carmaker conducted business in Germany under the Nazi regime and explores larger issues concerning the relations between international corporations and the Third Reich.
The book presents new and detailed information about General Motors' interactions with Hitler and other Nazi officials, including the carmaker's attempt to capture the Volkswagen project. It also reveals how American GM executives thwarted a sustained Nazi effort to gain control of Opel. The author concludes with an assessment of the extent of the company's implication, through Opel, in the Nazi war effort and in the exploitation of forced labor.

Drawing on primary historical material, The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation, provides a historical overview of decision making and political struggle within one of America's largest and most important corporations. Freeland examines the changes in the General Motors organization between the years 1924 and 1970. He takes issue with the well-known argument of business historian Alfred Chandler and economist Oliver Williamson, who contend that GM's multidivisional structure emerged and survived because it was more efficient than alternative forms of organization.

This book is close look at the evolution of the Toyota automobile company into the second largest in the world, after GM. It explains how the leaders of the company developed the famous Toyota system of production that has been widely studied and imitated.

Led by a young engineering graduate, James Worden, a group of MIT students started an electric car company in 1989 that today produces the cleanest car in America. The company is called Solectria, and this book chronicles the story of its evolution into a small but significant player in the world market for clean cars. In an age when car production is growing worldwide, the company provides a model for preserving clean air for future generations.

Automotive Health ermoeglicht den Menschen, ihre Gesundheit wahrend der Fahrt zu erfassen und damit praventive oder kurative Massnahmen einzuleiten. Das Konzept unterstutzt dabei den selbstbestimmten Umgang mit der eigenen Gesundheit. In diesem essential werden die Ergebnisse einer empirischen Studie vorgestellt, die die Kundenbedurfnisse nach Automotive Health untersucht und herausgestellt hat, welchen Einfluss z. B. der Gesundheitszustand oder die digitale Affinitat auf die Nutzenbereitschaft von digitalen Gesundheitsangeboten im Auto haben. Die Autoren: Julia van Berck M.Sc. ist Projektmanagerin fur Kooperationen im Gesundheits- und Sozialwesen an der FOM Hochschule fur Oekonomie & Management. Dr. med. Manfred Knye ist Leiter des Projekts Einfuhrung Exoskelette, Digitalisierung und Automotive Health der Volkswagen AG und beschaftigt sich mit dem Thema Gesundheit 4.0. Prof. Dr. David Matusiewicz ist Direktor des Instituts fur Gesundheit & Soziales (ifgs) und Dekan des Hochschulbereiches Gesundheit & Soziales an der FOM Hochschule fur Oekonomie & Management.

In Inside China's Automobile Factories, Lu Zhang explores the current conditions, subjectivity, and collective actions of autoworkers in the world's largest and fastest-growing automobile manufacturing nation. Based on years of fieldwork and extensive interviews conducted at seven large auto factories in various regions of China, Zhang provides an inside look at the daily factory life of autoworkers and a deeper understanding of the roots of rising labor unrest in the auto industry. Combining original empirical data and sophisticated analysis that moves from the shop floor to national political economy and global industry dynamics, the book develops a multilayered framework for understanding how labor relations in the auto industry and broader social economy can be expected to develop in China in the coming decades.

This volume contains articles from leading analysts and researchers on sustainable transportation, who provide critical reflections on how automobile-related climate policies have evolved up to now in Europe and around the world, in view of the widely recognized need to substantially curb global emissions of greenhouse gases in the coming decades. Authors describe the policies which have been most effective, outline their economic and social implications, present success stories while critically reviewing less successful examples, and suggest strategies to decarbonize passenger transportation on a global scale.

A little over a century ago in Hartford, Connecticut, Colonel Albert A. Pope was hailed as a leading automaker in the United States. That his name is not a household word today is the very essence of his story. Students of American business history will know of Pope, but this work also includes Pope's account of his Civil War service at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Vicksburg and explores in detail his entrepreneurial ventures.Pope's company was the world's largest manufacturer of bicycles (under the Columbia label) in the late 1800s. His production methods pointed the way for the building of automobiles through lightweight metals, rubber tires, precision machining, interchangeability of parts, and vertical integration. The founder of the Good Roads Movement, Pope entered automobile manufacturing while steam, electricity, and gasoline power were still vying for supremacy. The story of his failed dream of dominating U.S. automobile production is an engrossing view into America's industrial history.

Everyone knows that Toyota has had an amazing twenty-five- year run, rising from a humble Japanese start-up to a thriving global giant. But "how" did it pass Ford and GM to become the world's largest auto manufacturer? And how does it continue to thrive while so many competitors are struggling and failing?
Journalist David Magee dug deeply into Toyota's past and present, interviewing senior executives who rarely talk to the press, along with many other sources. The powerful lessons that he distills, especially about corporate culture, are valuable for managers in all industries.

A surprisingly little-known marque today, Elcar once ranked among the finest vehicles on American roads. Built to exacting standards in Elkhart, Indiana, an Elcar could compete head-to-head on the basis of performance, quality, or price with the products of much larger manufacturers. Ultimately done in by weak distribution and the ravages of the Depression, Elcar today stands as an example of an ambitious company that transformed itself, successfully if temporarily, from a maker of buggies and harnesses into a respected car manufacturer in the early days of the automotive age. This remarkably exhaustive history, researched over several decades from all available sources, including interviews with former Elcar employees, details every Elcar model and the Pratt vehicles that preceded them, as well as the personalities behind the cars. Extensive appendices provide a complete model history, with specifications; a full corporate chronology; an illustrated accounting of all Elcars and Pratts known to survive whole or in part today; a roster of company employees; a descriptive list of all ads and brochures ever produced by the company; and a wealth of other data that can be found nowhere else. Lavishly illustrated and surpassingly thorough, this book is a well of information on a significant but forgotten line of automobiles.

Covering the period from 1820 to 1950, the time when the first Fords came to America until shortly after the death of Henry Ford, ""The Fords of Dearborn"" is a series of illustrated stories about the various branches of the Ford family, together with accounts of some of Henry Ford's unpublicized projects. Author Ford R. Bryan - who was himself a member of the Ford family of Dearborn - provides authentic and fascinating information about the Fords based almost entirely on information and photographs contained in the Ford Archives of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village. From family bibles, family legend, correspondence, and the historical archives of Dearborn, he traces the family history from England to Ireland, then to America, and in 1832 to the wilderness of the Michigan Territory. The Fords of Dearborn includes genealogical tables and more than 125 illustrations depicting family members, their farms, their homes, and their relationships. This second edition, in a new design in larger format than the previous edition, includes an index that will be appreciated by both readers and genealogists.

Most great figures in American history reveal great contradictions, and Henry Ford is no exception. He championed his workers, offering unprecedented wages, yet crushed their attempts to organize. Virulently anti-Semitic, he never employed fewer than 3,000 Jews. An outspoken pacifist, he made millions producing war materials. He urbanized the modern world, and then tried to drag it back into a romanticized rural past he'd helped to destroy.
As the American auto industry struggles to reinvent itself, Vincent Curcio's timely biography offers a wealth of new insight into the man who started it all. Henry Ford not only founded Ford Motor Company but institutionalized assembly line production and, some would argue, created the American middle class. By constantly improving his product and increasing sales, Ford was able to lower the price of the automobile until it became a universal commodity. He paid his workers so well that, for the first time in history, the people who manufactured a complex industrial product could own one. This was "Fordism"--social engineering on a vast scale. But, as Curcio displays, Ford's anti-Semitism would forever stain his reputation. Hitler admired him greatly, both for his anti-Semitism and his autocratic leadership, displaying Ford's picture in his bedroom and keeping a copy of Ford's MyLife and Work by his bedside. Nevertheless, Ford's economic and social initiatives, as well as his deft handling of his public image, kept his popularity high among Americans. He offered good pay, good benefits, English language classes, and employment for those who struggled to find jobs--handicapped, African-American, and female workers. Such was his popularity that in 1923, the homespun, clean-living, xenophobic Henry Ford nearly won the Republican presidential nomination.
This new volume in the Lives and Legacies series explores the full impact of Ford's indisputable greatness, the deep flaws that complicate his legacy, and what he means for our own time.

In 1998, there was the latest in a long and complex history of takeovers that had bedevilled Rolls-Royce and Bentley since the companies were founded. This resulted in Volkswagen taking ownership of the factory in Crewe, together with the Bentley range and name, while BMW moved Rolls-Royce production to a new site in Sussex. On 30 August 2002, the last Crewe-built Rolls-Royce rolled off the production line, bringing the era of Crewe-built Rolls-Royces to an end. Peter Ollerhead, an ex-Rolls-Royce employee, has spent years researching the history of the company in Crewe, from 1938 to 1998, focusing on the endeavours and the experiences of its employees: this is a book about people. The detailed text, illustrated with over 80 photographs, explains how the initial establishment of a Merlin aero engine factory was thwarted by the problems of building on a greenfield site, where the early days of skill shortages, a chronic need for housing and a strike were followed by a bombing raid in 1940, in which seventeen employees were killed. The arrival of car production just after the Second World War is fully covered, as are the other enterprises that helped to keep the company afloat, from War Department power units to hip joints for the NHS. Despite a troubled history - with two major fires, bankruptcy and large-scale redundancies - Rolls-Royce was Crewe's largest employer for many years, produced the world's best luxury cars, and influenced and shaped the town as no other company has done. This book is a fitting tribute to the generations of workers who made it all possible.

Just over 100 years ago, a small engineering concern in Vauxhall, South London, made its first motor car. Named after the place it was built, the Vauxhall was a revelation. Within a few years of expansion, production had moved to Luton. Vauxhall was purchased in the 1920s by General Motors and its most famous models include its Edwardian Prince Henry, the PA Cresta, perhaps the most distinctive of its American-styled cars, as well as the Astra, Cavalier and its 1970s rally winning cars such as the Firenza and Chevette. Since the 1950s, Vauxhall has remained one of Britain's most popular car makes, with many millions of its cars sold worldwide. Its F-type Victor was at one time the biggest export earner for Britain with over 200,000 sold abroad and the PA was the first true motorway cruiser built in Britain. Vauxhall: A History tells the story of the cars, the people that built them and also of Bedford, the truck and van division of Vauxhall.

The rapid growth of China's automotive industry has led to the development of a significant automotive parts subsector as well. The Chinese auto parts industry is largely focused around the Yangtze River Delta, which accounted for 42 per cent of total production in 2000. Within this region, Shanghai is the largest manufacturing center for auto parts with 25 per cent of total production in 2000. Zhejiang and Jiangsu accounted for 10 per cent and 7 per cent of total production in 2000 respectively. Following China's accession to the WTO in late 2001, the growth rates accelerated. To fulfil its ambition to become the main base of operations for leading foreign auto companies, China must establish a world-class automotive parts industry. This market research report addresses issues of interest to investors, presents our main survey and research findings, and analyzes legal and production aspects. It concludes with a look at future developments in this key industry. A directory of useful contacts appears at the end.

The book examines innovation in environment-friendly technologies in the automobile industry. The focus of the book are Germany (a technology leader in the global automobile industry), on the one hand, and India, China and Brazil (technologically proficient emerging technology leaders) on the other hand. Patents have been used as a metric to measure and understand innovation. The book traces the evolution of regulatory standards in the automobile industry, relies on a unique patent dataset, and draws on a number of interviews conducted with regulators and engineers to get a better picture of how environmental policies and standards, including emission norms and fuel requirements, have developed overtime and now the industry has responded. The book's core argument is that technological innovation is what has driven the industry in the past 125 years, but, at the same time, the industry has created problems and faced controversies with regard to its path dependency on carbon-intensive technologies. As a result, we have witnessed growing role of environmental regulators in ensuring that the growth path of the automobile industry, a powerhouse of growth of several economies, is aligned with the larger goals of addressing climate change and energy concerns. Against the backdrop of the emergence of Brazil, China and India in the global economy, the book focuses on the developments in these three countries, and draws parallels with Germany, which benefited from first mover advantage in technology and a substantial head-start in implementing cogent environmental policies. A standardized International Patent Classification (IPC) system has been used to, first, construct an index of regulatory stringency, based on regulations that came about between 1985 and 2010; and second, construct a unique cross-country weighted patent dataset for technologies invented in the past two and a half decades.