Visteon Moves Asia HQ to Shanghai
Visteon, one of the world's largest makers and distributors
of auto parts, plans to move its Asia headquarters from
Tokyo to Shanghai in the near future.
This move is seen as an opportunity to move in on the
China automobile market, which is seen as the last large
auto market in the world. The former Ford subsidiary,
along with other auto makers, have moved aggressively
particularly into the Shanghai market which had sales
of 1 million vehicles in 2002. US annual auto sales are
18-19 million.
The earliest entry into the China market was Volkswagen,
which started making the Santana model almost 20 years
ago. China is now VW's third largest auto market.
Other Japanese makers including Toyota and Honda have
also been aggressively expanding their China operations.
Some plans were slowed down because of the SARS crisis,
but are now picking up speed again. Honda has a manufacturing
facility in Guangzhou, and plans to export Accord models
to Asia.
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