Ford owns Mazda?
I mean, I knew about Volvo and Land Rover… but… MAZDA?
weird.
Oh, yeah, I don’t remember just when it started, but originally it was “joint projects” and “sharing of engineering and styling.” The previous generation of Mustangs looked a lot like one line of Mazdas. A line of small Ford trucks was all Mazda. The Probe was pretty much a Mazda project, except that it was built in the US. A recent Mercury Cougar was beautiful, and very Japanese in style. Ford also owns most of Jaguar, and some other UK badges.
General Motors prefers to own less than 50% of their offshore tendrils. Volvo trucks, Saab cars, Lotus (!), Holden in Australia, and at least a piece of Suzuki and Daewoo, are all beating General Motors blood.
Mitsubishi and Daimler-Chrysler are interwoven to some degree. Chrysler had bought American Motors-Jeep before they merged with Daimler-Benz.
The mingling of auto companies across the oceans will give your eyebrows some exercise. Fiat owns Ferrari. Audi, Porsche, and VW are brothers and sisters. I’m sure I have left out some stunning family ties.
Chrysler owned Lamborghini for a while, but now the Italian supercar maker is owned by Audi, which is part of the Volkswagen group.
Aston Martin is another one of Ford’s badges.
And of course, Lexus is a high-priced Toyota, Infiniti is made by Nissan, and Acura is another name for Honda.
I remember learning about this, when I had my 1992 Ford Probe. (Insert obligatory [snicker] tag here.)
The engine overheated one day on the way to work, and warped the aluminum head. I took it to the shop, and remember hearing the mechanics talk about ordering a new Mazda head.* At that point, I think I was thinking the same thing as you, FilmGeek ("… Mazda…?")
LilShieste
*- It was either the aluminum head, or the automatic transmission (or both)… can’t remember which was labeled ‘Mazda’.
Daimler sold off their shares of Mitsubishi Motors earlier this year, after the company took a hit in America with crappy sales, and in Japan with the revelation of criminally lax safety standards by the previous executives. So right now, MMC is pretty much on its own. Daimler still holds a large share of Fuso, Mitsubishi’s truck and bus division.
Nissan is also partnered to a large degree with Renault, which is how they ended up with a foreigner (Carlos Ghosn) as their CEO.
After doing a quick Google search I found that Renault holds a 44% stake in Nissan.
GM also has their fingers heavily into AM General, the people who make the Hummers.
It all just seems so… incestuous, somehow.
Nissan also own a 15% stake in Renault. Now that seems real incestuous.
Along with Vauxhall/Opel. Lotus was a GM protectorate for a while but is now owned by the same Malaysian consortium which controls Proton (or was, last I checked).
I used to own a Dodge-branded Mitsubishi pickup. What a piece of crap. Course, it was from the 80’s and had 165,000 miles on it.
Ford also owns Jaguar. General Motors owns SAAB, and has some kind of association with Fiat, Suzuki, and Isuzu.
I saw on a tv show once about a car that was a Ford and something else, maybe it was the Probe. There was a guy at the end of the line who’s job was to look at a list and see if the car should be one or the other, the only difference being the stickers.
Hey, I still drive a '93 Probe. And it’s paid for. So bite me. 