robin/subaru factory to close

cpurvis

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Don't know where you got the 40% from, that sound way too high.
Advertisers do all sorts of tricks with figures like setting upper & lower limits that include their most popular engine and exclude their competitors most popular engines.
Or start & end dates for the previous year that includes the oppositions new engine release . Wholesale sales so a switch to their engine ups their figures or retail sales so a switch to a competitors engine is excluded.
I doubt that any manufacturer would ever have 40% of the overall market, then, now or any time in the future unless we end up with only one brand of engine.

I don't remember where I got it either but with essentially only three engine manufacturers (Cummins, Detroit, Caterpillar; Mack makes their own engines), why would 40% be so unrealistic? What do you suppose Cummins' market share is now?
 

bertsmobile1

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I don't remember where I got it either but with essentially only three engine manufacturers (Cummins, Detroit, Caterpillar; Mack makes their own engines), why would 40% be so unrealistic? What do you suppose Cummins' market share is now?

Firstly the USA is not the entire world and the USA imports a lot of trucks , particularly in the 2 to 6 ton classes which are fitted with foreign made engines.
You also omitted IH who own the Navistar diesel plant that supplied engines to Ford , Dodge and a variety of agricultural factories.
Perkins which while owned by Cat still makes diesels in the USA for off road & Argentina for road use and in Japan for cars.
Ford had 3 diesel engines it made itself although down here they were not that popular.They also fitted Navistars & Cummings
The F series down here ( so I suppose in the USA as well ) was available with a Ford branded diesel engine although they were very similar looking to the Iseki diesel engine , possible a rebadge.
Europe used diesel engines almost exclusively for all trucks over 2 ton and a lot of these got imported into the USA.
SO Cat many have had 40% of a particular segment of the market but not entire diesel engine market.
And lets not overlook off road diesel engines used in rail, marine, mining, generators and of course road plant tractors.
When Cat took over Perkins in the 80's back when all CEO's were innoculated with the idiot "own the market" horizontal intergration idology Cat claimed to be the biggest diesel engine maker , IN THE WESTERN WORLD, convienently ignoring Russia, China Etc.
It would be a close call, but I rater feel that the EU would make more road diesel engines for trucks than the USA as a lot of US trucks still run petrol engines & Europe has been almost exclusively diesel since to 70's
 

cpurvis

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Excuse the hell out of me for bringing it up, Mr. NIT PICK.
 

bertsmobile1

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Hey,
You asked me why I doubted the 40% number & I gave my reasons.
Don't get cranky cause you don't like my answer.
If you feel it is wrong then prove it.
I am always happy to be proven wrong because after that I would be right.
Large companies always like to inflate their size & importance, if nothing else, it gives investors confidence & pushes up the share price.
For a long while Cat was skating on very thin ice as they went on a massive buying spree from 2000 onwards with borrowed money.

In another life I was involved in foundry.
I keep an interest in foundry business world wide & subscribe to a few trade journals.
During the Obama government there were 2 gob smacking announcements out of the USA
First was the new GMH Alloy foundry in Michigan , the first totally new foundry to be built in the USA for nearly 20 years, opened in 2017
The other was Cats new foundry in Brazil that was at the time the biggest iron foundry on the planet, to make very large diesel engines for shipping, power plants & mining.
The blurb associated with this was they were abandoning their road diesel plants in the USA in favour of their subsiduries in Russia & Europe and the join ventures in China.
Last year a bigger plant was announced to be built in China but as they need to build 2 power stations first, it might be a while before it is up & running.

A lot of automotive companies are getting out of the automotive industry.
EPA regulations are making it harder to manufacture in 1st world countries and astute managers can see that ultimately they will not be able to compete with China & India while maintaining reasonable profit levels.
So better to jump now to a sector where you can turn a good profit than to hang on too long & end up like Tecumseh.

Briggs have seen the writing on the wall and are slowly exiting the USA , doing joint ventures in China & India while vertically intergrating to keep sufficient demand for their engines to remain a minor player in the mower industry.
 

Romore

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Interesting that Briggs is moving their Vanguard production to the U.S. now that the agreement with Daihatsu has come to an end. The only engines built in Asia for the North American market will be the Intek horizontal singles.
 

bertsmobile1

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Because manufacturing in Japan is more expensive than manufacturing in the USA and then there is the shipping costs.
Vanguards out of Japan also went down here & into Europe.
However they have mostly been replaced by either Chinese engines ( cheaper ) or Kawasaki ( better )
Diahatsu is also exiting the small engine sector.
Briggs have at least one factory in China because we get a lot of push mowers down here with Briggs engines.
The Chinese engines have their numbers electro etched into the crankcase just behind & below the carb.

Japan has been outsourcing manufacturing for decades.
The most successful motorcycle in history, the Honda 9 / 110 step through is made in the Phillipines & Vietnam as is most of their motorcycles under 250cc.
It is amazing to think that 40 years ago Japan was a low cost manufacturing country, bankrupted by WW II.
So in the space of a single lifetime their economy has gone from low cost cheap manufactures, to design & outsourcing through to investment & high cost manufacturing.
Something that the UK took near 200 years to do & the US is part way through and our useless pollies aspire towards.
 
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