Hyundai Motor Co, Korea's largest automaker, will allow Taiwan's Sanyang Industrial Co (
Honda, Japan's second-largest automaker, severed ties with Sanyang in January to set up its own Taiwan subsidiary to sell automobiles.
Japan's second-largest automaker will initially spend NT$170 million to set up the subsidiary with operations beginning in March, said Satoshi Toshida (
Toshida declined to spell out the reason for the break-up at a press conference held in Taipei, saying only that the new firm will "reduce production costs" and "increase competitiveness."
But Honda may have pulled out because of Sanyang's decision to buy three vehicle companies in China and Vietnam in 2000 from parent ChinFon Group (
"Sanyang will stop making Honda automobiles after our parts inventory is diminished, but Hyundai will revive us," spokesman Yeh Fong-ming (
Sanyang plans to convert its production lines to Hyundai's specifications by September and produce 4,000 Hyundai cars this year, Yeh said. Sanyang plans to produce about 6,000 Honda cars this year, compared with 17,000 in 2001.
Honda last accounted for about 6 percent of Taiwan's vehicle market, including cars imported from Japan.
Amid the nation's worst recession on record, Taiwan's automobile market contracted a sharp 17.4 percent last year, with about 347,433 cars sold, down from more than 420,467 the previous year, local media reported, citing statistics from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
While some industry experts have expressed optimism that sales would recover in the third quarter of the year if the domestic economy rebounds, consumers may remain cautious, said Jeffrey Shen (
"Our studies found that sales will be about 350,000 units this year," Shen told the Taipei Times during an interview in early March.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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