The Future of the Automobile: The Report of Mit's International Automobile Program

by Alan A. Altshuler

Book Overview

Cited by Business Week as one of 1984's ten best books on business and economics, The Future of the Automobile is the most comprehensive assessment ever conducted of the world's largest industry. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 026201081X
• ISBN13: 9780262010818
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 321 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Thoroughly informative

When the average person thinks of the automobile industry, thefollowing names like Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota,Saab, etc. are likely to leap to mind. But what MIT's report points out is that the modern automobile industry is not represented just by these finished-product assemblers, but by suppliers and component craftsmen that constitute an extremely complex web that make up "the automobile industry." But the complexity of the automobile industry rests not only on the composition of the industry itself, but also the international environment within which the industry must operate. Domestic auto industries hold a special position in most countries in that most governments see the very existence of domestic auto producers as a good unto itself. For example, if a Japanese producer can engineer and produce a better widget, chances are that that producer will be able to market that product domestically and internationally with great success if widgets are not seen as a major threat to an important industry of another nation. But with automobiles (as was the case for Japanese producers in the early 1970's), the prospects for successful international competition is not so clear-cut. Automobile producers are therefore constrained not only by the forces of the market and competitors, but also by domestic and foreign governments that take a special interest in the success or failure of their firms.