Developments before World War I large-scale organization The automotive industry in World War II

Japan

The most spectacular increases in automotive production after World War II occurred in Japan. From a negligible position in 1950, Japan in 30 years moved past West Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States to become the world’s leading automotive producer. Steadily growing export sales of Japan’s small, fuel-efficient cars played a major role in this achievement. During the late 1970s and early ’80s, Japan’s principal automakers—Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and Tōyō Kōgyō (later Mazda)—enjoyed impressive export gains in North American and western European markets. These companies as well as Mitsubishi, Isuzu, Fuji, and Suzuki later opened manufacturing plants in major markets outside Japan to ease trade tensions and increase their competitiveness as the value of Japan’s currency soared. By the 1980s Japan’s carmakers were seen as the models for others to emulate, especially for their “just-in-time” method of delivering components to the assembly plants (see Consolidation, below) and the use of statistical process controls for enhancing vehicle quality, which ironically had been developed in the 1950s by an American but rejected at the time by American manufacturers.

In the 1990s the Japanese economy suffered a severe and prolonged recession, and the complicated interlocking relationships and cross-ownerships between Japanese automakers and their major component manufacturers and banks imposed severe financial hardship. At the end of the 20th century, many Japanese automakers and several major component manufacturers were either controlled by or had joint operations with non-Japanese firms. Renault, for example, held a controlling interest in Nissan, and in 2016 Mitsubishi joined the Renault-Nissan alliance.

South Korea

In a span of 20 years beginning in the 1970s, South Korea’s automotive industry rose from a small government-controlled parochial industry to a significant place in the world market. Three major companies—Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors Corporation, and Daewoo Motor Corporation—accounted for about 90 percent of the South Korean market, while the remainder was split among two minor producers and imports. Hyundai, the country’s dominant automaker, produced cars, light trucks, and commercial trucks and buses; it was part of the larger Hyundai Corporation, which had interests ranging from construction to shipbuilding. Kia, South Korea’s second largest automaker, was acquired by Hyundai in 1999. Daewoo, owned by the Daewoo Group conglomerate, entered the automobile field on a large scale in the 1980s and had won nearly a fifth of the market before entering into financial receivership and reorganization in 2000. Two years later it was sold to General Motors.


References

1. 
   https://www.britannica.com/technology/automotive-industry/The-modern-industry
   
2. 
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Uzbekistan
   
3. 
   https://www.britannica.com/technology/automotive-industry/The-modern-industry
   
4. 
   https://www.statista.com/topics/1487/automotive-industry/