GM to buy more wheels from China

Philip Nussel | | Automotive News / April 24, 2006 - 6:00 am


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DETROIT -- General Motors is poised to become the auto industry's largest buyer of wheels in China.

GM purchasing czar Bo Andersson said last week that GM will replace wheels made by Amcast Industrial Corp. in Indiana with aluminum wheels made in China by Zhejiang Wanfeng Auto Wheel Co. Ltd.

Amcast, of Fremont, Ind., sought Chapter 11 protection in December, just months after emerging from a previous reorganization. The company briefly cut off shipments that month to GM, causing delays in Corvette deliveries.

On April 11, Amcast announced plans to close plants in Fremont and Gas City, Ind., by mid-June. About 500 people will lose their jobs, according to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Andersson, GM's vice president of global purchasing, said Amcast has an exclusive eight-year deal to buy wheels from Zhejiang Wanfeng. GM acquired that contract in bankruptcy court proceedings for $6 million, he said.

That agreement meant that some of the wheels GM had been buying from Amcast already were coming from China. The new arrangement, and the closure of the Amcast plants, will increase that percentage.

GM had accounted for 80 percent of Amcast's business.

GM has propped up Amcast since its financial crisis erupted last November. Amcast, which supplied 13 GM assembly plants, stopped shipping wheels on Nov. 30. It resumed shipments to GM on Dec. 7, two days after the automaker won a court order forcing the supplier to do so.

 

That's sad but you have to admit, it's understandable.

An auto manufacturing looses thousands of dollars PER MINUTE when it's shut-down so if any supplier becomes unreliable for whatever reason, the manufacturer has to look elsewhere to secure its supplies. It's just a shame it's going to China.

Suppliers sahre in this problem, however. They've been pushed very hard to decrease costs by all the automakers and I believe that they should have simply said "no more" when insted they said, "yes...we'll do that" without taking into consideration that they really couldn't afford to do it.

I wish I knew what the answer was...I'm very much a "free market" guy but I'm begining to think that the government might need to step in and come up with a rational plan to protect our economy (or at least, make the inevitable chagnes less disruptive). I guess if I had the answer I'd run for president or at least the Congress.

 

interesting...





btw charlie ur closing in on 10 thousand posts

 

Maybe when I hit 10,000, Jason and Chris will offer me a partnership in this site.

 

I received an offer from them coming out of college. I guess that was a good decision

 

I got some catching up to do.

 

They should just manufacture the whole cars out there if it'll save money.

 

there is already a cadillac plant out there


i wonder if you can buy a chinese XLR-V in china with an "inspected by #16" and "made in china" sticker somewhere on it

 

Exactly. China makes the same goods for cheaper. And since the Chinese peasants are doing the work, we don't have to.

So clearly we don't have to work, and we have more money. It is win-win.

 

except for it takes jobs out of America and into China. which if they do too much of could be bad press for gm...

 

Out-sourcing...the best kind of sourcing (I'm not sure if anyone here saw that Simpsons)


If GM is getting cheaper wheels, maybe now they will offer more wheel choices for each car and stop charging insane prices like $750 for 16" rims to be chromed on a Camaro.

 

I just hope we don't have a future thread: " Z06 forged wheels crack in half as roof flies off."

 

Agree. For what they charge for some of their wheels you could get much nicer ones for just a tad more...

 

Automobile options (heck, even automobiles) are not really priced based on cost; they are priced on what the market will bear.

 

hmmmmmmmmm..


how long before the cars are being built there..

made in the U.S.A.
Upper
Seacoast
Asia