TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102990/1029208.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 29.5 KB | 599 lines

                P~                                                            BUSINESS, Page 74

COVER STORY

The Right Stuff


Does U.S. industry have it? With teamwork and new ideas, GM's
Saturn aims to show that American manufacturers can come
roaring back

By S.C. GWYNNE/DETROIT -- With reporting by Joseph Szczesny/
Detroit


    Is this an American auto plant, or a factory from another
planet? The company president walks around in a polo shirt with
a pocket logo right out of Star Trek, allows workers to call
him "Skip" and describes his position as "team member." He and
the union boss (who goes by "Dick") have a strange, collegial
relationship. As for the rank and file, they don't punch a time
clock and they get to handpick the people they work alongside.
During off-hours they run around an outdoor obstacle course and
engage in group hugging sessions. If they develop a bad
attitude, they are paid to spend a day thinking about what's
bothering them. That's not all: a TV commercial for this
multibillion-dollar venture features an employee's dog, a small
blond mutt named Emmett.

    Yes, this is an American auto factory, one as far out as its
name: Saturn. Situated 35 miles south of Nashville in the small
town of Spring Hill, Tenn., the Saturn plant and its 3,000 team
members represent a grand experiment in American manufacturing.
For General Motors, which has invested eight years and $3.5
billion to launch Saturn, the venture has a specific
competitive goal: to build small cars as well as the Japanese
do -- and then some. But GM's even more heroic mission for
Saturn is to help the world's largest industrial company (1989
sales: $126.9 billion) break loose from rusty traditions that
have dogged the company's performance for more than two
decades.

    Most important, as a working laboratory of labor relations
and manufacturing know-how, Saturn will help answer one of the
most pressing questions of the 1990s: Can America compete with
the Japanese? Automaking may be a relatively old field, at
least compared with supercomputer building or gene splicing.
But the automobile, with its 10,000 parts and ever increasing
complexity, remains one of the most challenging products to
manufacture and a telling measure of an industrial society's
capabilities. "Saturn will have enormous psychological impact
on American business," says Lester Thurow, dean of M.I.T.'s
Sloan School of Management. "If Saturn is successful, it will
prove that it's possible to junk the old bureaucracies, change
the corporate culture, change the adversarial relationship
between union and management, and put it all back together
right. If they succeed, it will be a big positive for America.
If not, it will be a huge downer."

    So far, the results offer hope. This week the first Saturn
dealers will open their doors, starting in 30 locations in the
West and Southeast and gradually growing to 130 by the end of
next year. They will be offering what David E. Davis Jr., the
dean of auto critics, has judged "a damned nice little car."
That is no small feat. No other American company sells or
builds any kind of little car without substantial help from
foreign partners. Honda, Toyota, Nissan and other Japanese
companies have driven away with that segment of the car
business, boosting Japan's overall share of the U.S. auto
market from 19.6% in 1980 to 27.7% last year, or 2.7 million
vehicles. When Chrysler dropped its U.S.-made Dodge Omni and
Plymouth Horizon models this year, the company began relying
strictly on Japanese-built vehicles to fill out the small-car
category of its product line. Ford was able to stay in the
market only by basing its new Escort and Mercury Tracer cars
on a Mazda prototype and by adopting that company's
manufacturing technology.

    Yet the most pitiful performer in the small-car field during
the past two decades has been GM. The bad reputation spread in
1970 with the Chevrolet Vega, a poorly engineered car notorious
for rust and breakdowns. That was followed in 1975 by the
poor-quality Chevette, a hasty response to the first oil
crisis. Then came the much hyped X-cars (Chevrolet Citation,
Oldsmobile Omega) in 1979, which suffered from defective
clutches and brakes. Two years later, the underpowered and
overpriced J-cars (Chevrolet Cavalier, Cadillac Cimarron) rolled
off the line, alienating young buyers.

    Since the mid-1980s, when both Chrysler and Ford staged
impressive comebacks, GM has become a paradigm for America's
manufacturing inadequacies. Customers and competitors alike
have viewed the company as an overfed, ingrown bureaucracy. The
abuse has been humiliating at times. Renegade director H. Ross
Perot lacerated the company for its short-term obsession with
profits, while the quasi-documentary Roger & Me portrayed
chairman Roger Smith as a heartless number cruncher. During the
decade, GM's share of the U.S. market slid from 46% to a low
of 32%. Says Thurow: "The worst thing to happen to our economy
in the past ten years was the fact that GM lost so much of its
market share, mostly to foreign companies."

    Through it all, GM brass have pointed to Saturn as the
company's great hope. Smith, its enthusiastic patron, called
it "a project of cosmic dimensions" whose products would
someday "shame" the Japanese competition. As Smith promised,
everything about Saturn is large scale. It is GM's first new
carmaking division since the automaker acquired Chevrolet in
1918, and its huge new plant in Spring Hill is the most
self-reliant assembly plant built in the U.S. since Henry Ford
put together his Rouge River complex in 1927. Saturn makes its
own engines, transmissions, body stampings, instrument panels
and seats. Fully 90% of the car's bulk and 65% of its parts are
built on the site. Saturn's developers wanted it that way, the
better to break away from GM's mold and reputation. Saturn's
advertisements contain no mention of GM.

    To start with, Saturn is offering three models: the SL
sports sedan (base price: $7,995), the SL2 sports touring sedan
($10,295) and  the SC sports coupe ($11,775). Saturn gave
dealers a happy surprise -- and competitors a call to battle
-- by pricing the SL sedan so low, thus undercutting such
archrivals as the Honda Civic DX by $1,500 and the Toyota
Corolla DLX by $2,000. Even so, most Saturn customers will not
be driving $8,000 cars off the lot, since buyers will be paying
a $275 delivery charge, plus $695 if they want an automatic
transmission and $775 for air conditioning. Saturn will offer
no rebates or other incentives, but its warranty has some
sweeteners: a 24-hour roadside assistance program and a
money-back guarantee for dissatisfied customers who return the
car within 30 days or 1,500 miles.

    So far, the car has earned respectful -- but qualified --
reviews from car critics, who praise its crisp handling,
handsome interior design and solid workmanship. "A major step
forward for General Motors," said Road & Track, while Motor
Trend lauded the sports coupe as "a remarkable feat for the
home team . . . something to be proud of." Even so, some
critics complained about excessive wind noise and the raucous
sound of Saturn's engine at high r.p.m., which Car and Driver
described as "a chorus of Osterizers." Other critics found
Saturn's styling to be too similar to other GM models.

    Most experts conclude that Saturn ranks with its Japanese
competitors as a noble contender -- if not yet a knockout
champion. What cannot be known for sure at this point is
probably the most important single factor: Saturn's
reliability. In that department, the company is taking no
chances. Only 1,000 Saturns will be ready for sale this week,
about half the number expected, because the plant has slowed
down its production to iron out any initial bugs. "We've had to
do some tweaking," a Saturn official explained. Once rolling,
Saturn aims to boost production to 250,000 a year by the end
of 1991 and 360,000 by 1995.

    For the first time in years, GM's timing of a new product
seems uncannily accurate. Saturn's debut coincides with
rocketing gasoline prices and a looming recession, all of which
should be a boon to a small, inexpensive car that gets 27
m.p.g. in city driving and 37 m.p.g. on the highway. In Spring
Hill, Saturn executives exude a cocky optimism that their
moment has arrived. They are confident enough in Saturn that
they chose Southern California, the heart of import country, as
one of the first launching points. Saturn's goal is to sell 80%
of its cars to import buyers. "We're really out to get the guy
who's driving the Civic or the Corolla. That's the niche," says
Richard (Skip) LeFauve, a former Navy pilot who runs Saturn
with quiet self-assurance.

    Why is Saturn so revolutionary for American industry?
Primarily because this attempt to reverse GM's industrial
decline acknowledges for the first time on a large scale the
real reason for Japan's manufacturing superiority over the past
two decades. The secret is not advanced technology or low wages
or some mystical Asian work ethic. Japan's most important
advantage is its management system: the way it deals with
employees, suppliers, dealers and customers. This month a
historic, $5 million M.I.T. study of the world's auto companies
concluded that Japan's advantages boil down to a few elements,
including teamwork, efficient use of resources and a tireless
commitment to improving quality.

    The philosophical nature of Japan's automaking edge was
proved once and for all with the success of the first Honda
plant in Marysville, Ohio, where American workers build Accords
whose quality rivals or exceeds the same cars built in Japanese
plants. Following the example of Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda,
Japanese companies in the 1960s and 1970s effectively reworked
Henry Ford's theories, replacing his intensely hierarchical
assembly-line system with a more flexible team-based
arrangement. Japan's efforts have been fruitful. In the past
decade the Japanese have built 11 plants in the U.S. and Canada
with the capacity to make 2.6 million cars a year.

    To be sure, automaking has become such a globalized business
that the nationality of cars is increasingly blurred. GM owns
38% of Japan's Isuzu, 50% of South Korea's Daewoo Motors, 50%
of Sweden's Saab-Scania and 5% of Japan's Suzuki, and shares
some manufacturing operations with both Toyota and Suzuki.
Those alliances give GM global reach, but the automaker was in
danger of evolving into little more than a holding company if
it did not relearn how to manufacture competitive cars in its
own plants.

    Saturn's best hope is that it represents a profound change
in the way GM manages its people. But the difference is not
technological. Saturn's cavernous, mile-long Tennessee factory
is a medium-tech plant, as are many of the most efficient
facilities in Japan. The core of Saturn's system is one of the
most radical labor-management agreements ever developed in this
country, one that involves the United Auto Workers in every
aspect of the business. The executive suite in Spring Hill is
shared by president LeFauve and U.A.W. coordinator Richard
Hoalcraft, who often travel together and conduct much of the
company's business in each other's presence.

    Beyond sharing power at top levels, the labor agreement
established some 165 work teams, which have been given more
power than assembly-line workers anywhere else in GM or at any
Japanese plant. They are allowed to interview and approve new
hires for their teams (average size: 10 workers). They are
given wide responsibility to decide how to run their own areas;
when workers see a problem on the assembly line, they can pull
on a blue handle and shut down the entire line. They are even
given budget responsibility. One team in Saturn's final-assembly
area voted to reject some proposed pneumatic car-assembly
equipment and went to another supplier to buy electronic gear
that its members believed to be safer. Says Hoalcraft: "I don't
know of another U.A.W. person who has ever decided on the
purchase and installation of equipment."

    Not all of Saturn's progressive ideas sprang up in
Tennessee. Many were borrowed from around the world by the
Group of 99, a team of Saturn workers who traveled 2 million
miles in 1984 and looked into some 160 pioneering enterprises,
including Hewlett-Packard, McDonald's, Volvo, Kawasaki and
Nissan. Their main conclusions: that most successful companies
provide employees with a sense of ownership, have few and
flexible guidelines and impose virtually no job-defining shop
rules.

    From that blueprint grew the most radical twist in Saturn's
labor agreement, one that is even more democratic than the
Japanese model: the provision for consensus decision making.
The Saturn philosophy is that all teams must be committed to
decisions affecting them before those changes are put into
place, from choosing an ad agency to selecting an outside
supplier. "That means a lot of yelling sometimes, and
everything takes a lot longer," says U.A.W. official Jack
O'Toole, who oversees Spring Hill personnel, "but once they
come out of that meeting room, they're 100% committed."

    Saturn's workers were recruited from U.A.W. locals in 38
states and carefully screened. By accepting a job at Saturn,
they gave up their rights ever to work for any other GM
division. Instead of hourly pay, they work for a salary
(shop-floor average: $34,000), 20% of  which is at risk. Whether
they get that 20% depends on a complex formula that measures
car quality, worker productivity and company profits. In the
company's first year, employee salaries will depend largely on
car quality. If a team produces fewer defects than the targeted
amount, its members will receive 100% of their salary. If they
perform even better, they are eligible for a bonus.

    The result is that Saturn has attracted a younger, more
entrepreneurial crew than other GM divisions. The average age
of a Saturn worker is 38, vs. 43 for the whole company.
Saturn's work force is 20% female, slightly higher than the
portion at GM as a whole. Many workers say they were drawn by
the prospect that Saturn could compete on an equal footing.
"The thing that most interested me was the idea that we  could
beat the Japanese. That's why I came here," says James
Archibald, 34, a line worker in body fabrication, who pulled
up stakes in Alabama to take his chances at Saturn. Archibald
and his fellow workers share an almost religious zeal for their
mission and habitually refer to traditional GM methods as "Old
World," as if they were talking about the Middle Ages.

    But people skills are not Saturn's only strong point. Since
they were outfitting a plant from the ground up, Saturn's team
members incorporated an array of new equipment and techniques.
Their aim was to achieve what the M.I.T. study dubbed "lean
production," the Japanese system that uses "half the human
effort in the factory, half the manufacturing space, half the
investment in tools, half the engineering hours to develop a
new product." At Saturn, team members rejected the traditional
U.S. form of assembly line, where workers do two things at once
-- toil and shuffle -- as they struggle to keep up with car
bodies creeping down the line. On the Saturn "skillet" line,
workers ride along on a moving wooden conveyor belt as they do
their jobs, which enables them to concentrate on their work.
Other progressive steps are the use of water-borne paint (rather
than oil-based), which reduces pollution, and an
aluminum-casting method called the lost-foam process, which
produces better-quality engine components with less machining.

    The product contains several innovative features as well,
including 54 patented inventions. Some are subtle: electronic
controls for the automatic transmission that allow smoother
shifting. Others are more fundamental: the body of a Saturn is
built atop a very rigid space frame, which gives structural
integrity and protection for passengers. The space frame is not
unique to Saturn, but it supports a special feature: all the
vertical body panels (doors, fenders, quarter panels) attached
to it are made of plastic polymer, which doesn't rust and
resists low-velocity denting. The horizontal panels are still
made of steel.

    While Saturn's advertising will eventually tout the car's
qualities, the early pitch is clearly to patriotism and
small-town sentiment. That may be a canny marketing move. "The
Saturn is the beginning of something we have been warning our
Japanese friends about," wrote Jean Lindamood, executive editor
of Automobile magazine. "Americans are harboring strong
anti-Japanese sentiment just below the surface, and when
Detroit can make a car that is the equivalent of a Japanese
car, Americans will buy it. I believe it will sell like crazy.
I also believe that if Saturn has quality problems, Saturn is
finished."

    For all the pep-rally enthusiasm at Saturn, the venture has
given rise to a litany of doubts both inside and outside GM
about the wisdom of adding another car line when the
automaker's factories are running at only 80% of capacity. GM
was forced to close 11 plants in the 1980s and is likely to
shut four more plants in the next three years. Says rival
automaker Lee Iacocca: "GM needs another car line like they
need a hole in the head."

    Saturn may also lure customers away from other GM products,
especially its highly successful Geo line, which is made with
partners Suzuki and Toyota. "They're not going to steal market
share from the Japanese," says Paul Lienert, editor of
Automotive Industries' Insider, a trade newsletter. "It's more
likely that they'll cannibalize other GM products, so for the
company it will be a net wash in market share."

    One of Saturn's biggest challenges will be to turn a profit,
even in the long run. "Nobody makes money on small cars," says
Maryann Keller, an analyst for the investment firm Furman Selz
Mager Dietz & Birney. "Saturn's no different from anybody else.
The Japanese certainly don't make money on small cars." In most
cases, those models serve as loss leaders for the larger, more
option-loaded vehicles and to boost the average fuel-efficiency
of an automaker's total fleet in order to meet U.S. government
standards. But GM president Lloyd Reuss contends that Saturn
will make a profit within eight years, a respectable
performance for an all-new car. "None of us know exactly when
we're going into the black on Saturn," says Reuss, "but it has
to be a bona fide entity that is profitable, and not profitable
at the expense of cannibalization from other GM lines."

    Is this exotic experiment in the Tennessee pastureland just
a bright spot in a gloomy picture, or does it herald real
change for the manufacturer? GM chairman Robert Stempel, who
succeeded Roger Smith last August, is likely to operate in ways
far different from his predecessor. Smith, an autocratic
manager with a purely financial background, made sweeping
strategic moves that included launching Saturn and spending
billions of dollars on high-tech robotics and such acquisitions
as Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft. Stempel, by
contrast, is an authentic "car guy." His most important
attribute may be his reputation as a steadfast team player,
since almost everyone agrees that GM's challenge now is to
better motivate its work force (total employees: 800,000).

    GM's drive to promote the Japanese-inspired team concept at
its plants has often been greeted with suspicion, if not
outright hostility, and many line workers cling resolutely to
the Old World: a rigid, adversarial system characterized by
strict seniority rules and a crippling multiplicity of job
classifications. The result is a patchwork of different systems
among GM plants, many of which are light-years behind the
highly efficient Buick City factory in Flint, Mich., where the
Buick LeSabre is produced. Overall, GM has made virtually no
gains in productivity and remains the highest-cost automaker in
the U.S. In fact, the company has been losing money on its
North American carmaking plants for several years and has had
to rely for profits on its successful European operations (auto
brands: Opel, Vauxhall), its auto-financing subsidiary and
other divisions.

    Yet chairman Smith's radical cost cutting, which removed
137,000 workers from the payroll, and his $50 billion
investment in retooling will eventually pay off for the
company. More important, his huge reorganization of the company
in the mid-1980s is finally creating some cooperation between
GM's far-flung divisions. One major change has taken place in
its Automotive Components Group, a $33 billion operation.
Because the companies in the group (examples: Harrison
Radiator, Packard Electric, Inland Fisher Guide) were captives,
there was traditionally no incentive for them to offer
competitive prices. GM now insists that its parts makers stand
on their own, which has done wonders. The Delco Maraine
division has cut 70% from the cost of manufacturing antilock
brake systems.

    The company's most dogged problem is its image among
consumers. Admits president Reuss, with a candor
uncharacteristic of GM's inner sanctum: "In the early and
mid-1980s, we let a lot of people down. We disappointed
customers with some of our products' quality, reliability and
durability. And as we were going through the change from
rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive, we had too many cars
that looked alike."

    GM cars have improved vastly, but most car shoppers don't
perceive it yet. While GM still lags behind most Japanese
manufacturers in overall quality, its cars have 53% fewer
defects than they had only five years ago, a fact the company
is just beginning to tout in its advertisements. Some of GM's
car lines actually beat the Japanese. Buick, for example,
ranked fifth in the most recent J.D. Power survey of initial
quality, placing the GM division ahead of Honda, Nissan, Acura
and BMW, among others. The Buick LeSabre model placed ahead of
the Acura Legend, Honda Accord and Nissan Maxima on the Power
list of the most trouble-free models.

    At the heart of the issue is consumer trust, which the
Japanese have deservedly won and GM now has an opportunity to
win back. Inspired by Saturn, GM may be able to turn the once
derogatory epithet "domestic" into a true competitive
advantage. "The Japanese have been worried about this for some
time. It scares the liver out of them," says David Cole,
director of the Office for the Study of Automotive
Transportation at the University of Michigan.

    Many car experts see the beginning of a dramatic turnaround
at GM. The company's products have features to boast about:
multivalve engines, antilock braking systems, traction control,
all-wheel drive and other new technologies. GM's new electronic
transmissions have won rave reviews from the automotive press.
"Let me put it into perspective,"  says auto consultant James
Harbour, whose landmark 1980 study first shed light on Japan's
manufacturing advantages. "General Motors is about to kick butt
from one end of this country to the other. They're renewing
products faster, they're continually reducing the cost of
renewing those products, and you're starting to see a real
distinctiveness between cars."

    Consumers may be starting to notice too. GM's long, steady
slide in market share bottomed out at a dismal 32% last October
and has climbed back to 36%, even in a soft market. While
Ford's sales are off 9% so far this year and Chrysler's are
down 17%, GM is running only 5% behind last year's pace. But
all of the Big Three have been outraced by the proliferating
Japanese-owned plants in the U.S., which have increased sales
41.3% so far this year, selling 840,000 cars by mid-October.
Overall Japanese market share in the U.S. has grown only about
1 1/2 percentage points this year, however, because most of the
new Japanese production in the U.S. has been offset by reduced
imports.

    GM's extensive retooling, a drain in the 1980s, will be a
boon in the 1990s by enabling the company to shorten its cycle
of product development. Between last year and 1994, virtually
every car and truck in its product line will have been
redesigned, a claim that no other car company can make. In
1990-91 alone, GM will be introducing more new cars than Ford,
Chrysler, Honda and Toyota combined. The 1992 model year will
see redesigns of the Buick LeSabre, Pontiac Bonneville,
Oldsmobile 88, Cadillac Eldorado and Seville, and Chevy's
Beretta and Corsica lines, among others.

    Most daunting of all for GM's competitors, the company has
decided to fight for a bigger piece of the market. "GM is the
pivotal company in this country," says analyst Keller. "By not
defending market share, it allowed Chrysler to survive and
allowed Ford to become this competitive monster. But here's
something to think about: What if GM actually decided to defend
its market share? I think that's going to be the major change."
GM's Reuss confirms it: "At the top of our list is to
profitably increase market share. You didn't see that five years
ago." Saturn, in particular, throws down a challenge to GM's
rivals. Ford hopes to fight back with the new Escort, designed
by Mazda and built in Wayne, Mich. Chrysler is lagging behind,
with a replacement for its Omni and Horizon cars due in two
years.

    If Saturn succeeds, then the message to the rest of American
industry will be unambiguous. The American work force, often
and unfairly maligned as the cause of U.S. competitive woes
over the past two decades, can compete with anyone if managed
intelligently. GM's smaller U.S. rivals have already adopted
some of the progressive techniques employed at Saturn. Ford,
which is using Japanese-style team systems at many of its
plants, has already improved so much that its efficiency
matches that of the average Japanese plant in Japan. Chrysler's
best factory, in Sterling Heights, Mich., is nearly as
efficient as the newest Japanese plants and matches the average
Japanese facility in quality.

    The commitment to changes as bold as Saturn's represents a
major turnaround in the thinking of corporate America. A report
issued last year by the Council on Competitiveness, a group of
scholars and industrialists, concluded that U.S. industry had
declined in the past two decades because "top U.S. managers
began to focus on marketing and finance at the expense of
manufacturing and, as a result, failed to manage the
investments in worker skills, plant and equipment necessary for
a strong manufacturing capability." The council noted that
Japanese manufacturers "spend two-thirds of their R. and D.
budgets on process innovations, while U.S. manufacturers spend
only one-third."

    In other words, corporate America seems to be recognizing
that making the product right is as important as dreaming it
up and selling it. "People should look at Saturn as a potential
watershed," says the University of Michigan's Cole. "This is
not just a bunch of guys using some new machinery on the plant
floor. It's really an entirely new vision of the system." If
the vision is clear and true, the 1990s could bring a vigorous
comeback for American industry.


____________________________________________________________
DETROIT'S BIGGEST FAMILY


    Where GM's brnad names came from, and how they're running:



    CHEVROLET

    Started in 1911 by Billy Durant and race-car driver Louis
Chevrolet, the nameplate known for simple, affordable cars
became GM's biggest seller. But during the 1980s it also became
the biggest loser, in part because of foreign competition in
small cars. This year, thanks to its sporty Geo line (built in
joint ventures with Japanese companies) and revived light-truck
sales, Chevy has gained back almost a full percentage point of
market share.

    OLDSMOBILE

    The 1897 creation of Ransom E. Olds rose to become GM's No.
2 seller, riding on a reputation for powerful models such as
the Eighty-Eight and Toronado. But Olds has bogged down since
the late '80s, selling half as many cars as it did in the '70s.
Old's main problem: a lack of any clear identity.

    BUICK

    The 87-year-old division started by David Buick is one of
GM's comeback kids. Bouyed by auto-quality ratings that rank
it ahead of such illustrious makes as Honda and Nissan, Buick
has solidified its market share among middle-aged buyers. Sales
of its LeSabre and Skylark lines are particularly strong.

    PONTIAC

    The brand named for an Indian chief has been able to do what
Olds hasn't: it has struck a clear identity in the market,
largely by emphasizing the sportiness of its cars. The division
is staking its future on such souped-up offerings as the
powerful new multivalve 3.4-liter engine and forthcoming
redesigns of the popular Grand Am and Firebird lines.

    CADILLAC

    Launched in 1902 and named for the French explorer who
founded Detroit, the luxury-car division is turning the corner
after a long slump in the 1970s and '80s. This month Cadillac
won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which may help
polish its reputation. Coming soon: big new engines, more
supple suspensions, sleeker styling.

    SATURN

    Founded in 1983 and taking its name from NASA's powerful
rockets, Saturn is aimed to compete directly with the small-car
models produced by Honda and Toyota. The division aims to
produce 250,000 cars in 1991 and build to an output of 360,000
by the mid-1990s. Models on the drawing board: a station wagon
and a convertible.