Snippet: "Ardmore and the airpark truly is a logistical, distribution dream," Hale said.
Oklahoma City will be the site of the company's global headquarters for sales, marketing and distribution outside Asia...
A new research and development facility will be housed at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
"We can take those junior-level, senior-level, graduate-level engineering students that have interest in automotive and give them practical experience," Hale said. "We are going to give something back to the community, not just take."
At full capacity, the assembly plant at the Ardmore Airpark will employ about 325 people; the global headquarters in Oklahoma City will employ another 150; and an estimated 35 will work at the research and development entity in Norman, for an estimated annual payroll exceeding $30 million.
The other thing is, historically other car companies from foreign lands have always "tested the waters" before committing to building factories here. Not this time, as Nanjing Automobile Corp. is betting the ranch (pun intended) that they and Oklahoma will succeed.
ateixeira says:
11:08 AM, 07/13/06
I hope they produce a quality product, in order to be sustainable.
davesbrew says:
01:46 PM, 07/14/06
What’s a bit scary is Chinese made cars are notorious in the world auto industry for being low tech and having very poor reliability. But because this has been primarily engineered by another company and it appears that Nangzing is just heading up the financials, hopefully reliability won’t be an issue. If they carry over the pricing from the current MG TF, we're looking at 28k-34k using exchange rates GBP-USD. Who knows what will happen with them building them locally, but bad reliability in a car priced like that spells disaster.
I do however have great faith in the Sooners to do some good R&D work for them.
chrisducati says:
04:54 AM, 07/26/06
Quality will have to be their number one aim. The last MG I owned was a '77 MGB. It was fine until about 30k miles then it turned into an electrical nightmare. I never had any engine problems and it was a blast to drive. I will look at one if they have a hyundai like warranty.