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Automotive Industry

Trends indicate that all-wheel-drive will be all the rage - Inside Line - all-wheel drive vehicles soon will rise to 1.4 mn vehicles

Automotive Industries, Dec, 2002

Analyzing industry trends is a lot like panning for gold: After hours of painstaking work, sometimes all you get is some dirt along with sore, dirty fingers. However, every once in a while, a sliver of gold appears and makes all the work worthwhile. Here's a trend that is probably more gold than dirt (but, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder): During the next five years (between 2002 and 2007) the number of four-wheel drive vehicles (normally-configured rear-wheel vehicles offering four-wheel drive) produced in North America will remain relatively stable at 3.8 million vehicles, while all-wheel drive vehicles (normally-configured front-wheel drive vehicles offering four-wheel drive) will leap from 484,000 to 1.4 million vehicles. As a percentage of vehicles produced the latter group grows from 3.0 percent of the market to 8.3 percent.

What does this mean? First, the OEMs are moving the "off-road" performance to cars of all segments, not just crossovers SUVs. This means more driveline and chassis content and complexity in segments that previously only offered front-wheel drive. For suppliers, it means more opportunity for those companies that can offer innovative functionality in more constrained, under-car spaces.

Source: CSM Worldwide www.csmauto.com

DRIVE LINE TYPE(North America)


      FWD = Front-wheel  RWD = Rear-wheel  4WD = Rear-wheel
            drive             drive         drive vehicle

2002         3.0               23.3              23.8
2003         4.2               22.6              23.2
2004         5.2               22.2              24.9
2005         5.9               22.8              23.8
2006         7.1               23.2              21.3
2007         8.3               23.2              20.5

        AWD = Front-wheel
      drive vehicle offering
         four-wheel drive

2002           50.0
2003           50.1
2004           47.7
2005           47.6
2006           48.3
2007           47.9

Source: CSM Worldwide. www.csmauto.com

Automotive Industry

Trends indicate that all-wheel-drive will be all the rage - Inside Line - all-wheel drive vehicles soon will rise to 1.4 mn vehicles

Automotive Industries, Dec, 2002

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