The Plastic CAR

摘要

Charles R. Billiu is grinning as he steps, or more accurately climbs, out of a vehicle that combines elements of a dune buggy, sport-utility, and surrey sans fringe. With front fenders arched like eyebrows in mock surprise, the car itself seems to grin in a cartoonish way. Bystanders smile too, entranced by the oddball conveyance that's suggestive of picnics at the beach, maybe with a first date. And the badge on the grille announces—as if it weren't already clear—that this is a product of the Fun Car Co. Beguiling as it is, this first prototype of Fun Car, a division of Ticom Corp., based in Warren, Michigan, is more than just another try by an independent manufacturer to produce a recreational vehicle. It's a deceptively casual way of demonstrating a revolutionary new method of making cars—a process that could well have as much impact on future cars as the introduction of the assembly line had at the turn of the century. And as with the advent of mass production, the biggest impact Billiu expects to have on today's auto industry is to dramatically lower the cost of cars. Today's cars are almost universally made of hundreds of pieces, formed from sheets of steel shaped by huge stamping presses and welded into finished bodies at a rate of roughly one a minute. A modern steel-fabrication plant costs billions of dollars; the end product becomes cheap only because such a plant spews out hundreds of thousands of identical cars a year. Only a handful of auto companies today have the resources to maintain and finance such a system.