Chrysler said it plans to build small engines with Mitsubishi
Motors Corp. and Hyundai Motor Co. at a plant the automakers will build
just south of Detroit. The plant will produce about 600,000
four-cylinder engines a year when it comes on line in 2005, and is part
of a previously announced joint venture between the three companies
named the Global Engine Alliance, Chrysler said.
The same engine design will go into production in Japan and South
Korea next year and will have combined annual output, together with the
U.S. facility, of about 1.5 million engines, Chrysler President and
Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche said.
He said the plant in Dundee, Michigan, would have about 400
employees and help make Global Engine Alliance one of the world's
biggest producers of a single "family" or design of engines.
DaimlerChrysler has a 10 percent stake in Hyundai, which is one of
the world's fastest-growing automakers, and it owns a controlling
37 percent of Mitsubishi.
Zetsche said the joint venture offered "significant cost
advantages" and added that Hyundai and Mitsubishi would each take
30 percent of the output from the Michigan plant for vehicles they sell
in North America.
State government officials said the automaker had been provided
with about $115 million in state and local financial incentives to build
the plant in Michigan.
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