Detroit diesel monterrey

Sloan, president of GM during the s and s, Charles F. Kettering can be credited with the foresight and drive behind the practical application of diesel power. Kettering supervised experiments at GM as early as to develop a smaller, more efficient diesel. As Sloan tells the story in his memoirs My Years With General Motors, he dropped by Kettering's office at the research laboratories one day and said 'Ket, why is it, recognizing the high efficiency of the diesel cycle, that it has never been more generally used?

Sloan replied in his typically forthright manner, 'Very well--we are now in the diesel engine business. You tell us how the engine should run and I will see that available manufacturing facilities are provided to capitalize the program.

The small, practical GM diesel engine might never have been developed, however, if Kettering hadn't also been a yachtsman. Kettering's fascination with diesel engines led him to purchase a diesel engine built by Winton Engines for use in his personal yacht.

Kettering was so impressed with the Winton engine that he convinced Sloan to buy the Cleveland Ohio company. Alexander Winton, one of America's pioneer auto makers, was reportedly enthusiastic about the sale of his company to GM. He wanted to see the potential of diesel realized but knew that the cost of developing such an engine was beyond his scope. The apparently happy takeover was almost derailed by the market crash of , but the sale went through in Simultaneously, GM purchased another Cleveland-based company, Electro-Motive Engineering Company, which had worked closely with Winton in the s in their endeavor to develop a diesel-powered locomotive engine.

The purchase of these companies was a great risk for GM in those economically turbulent times. The risk paid off but only after a number of years of intensive and often distressing research and development. The break for the two-cycle GM diesel engine came when the company decided to use it as the power source for its dramatic reconstruction of an assembly line for the Chicago World's Fair.

The diesels required continual repairs, prompting Kettering's son to comment that 'the only part of the engine that worked well was the dip-stick. Demonstration runs showed that a diesel-powered locomotive could cut the running time from Chicago to the West Coast by more than twenty hours.

Once the industry decided to convert to diesel, GM had a corner on the market. No other major manufacturer built a diesel locomotive engine until after World War II. The success of the locomotive diesel foray prompted GM in to set up Detroit Diesel Engine Division to research, develop, and promote smaller diesel engines for marine and industrial use. The importance of the railroad began a precipitous decline after World War II, but Detroit Diesel had already moved decisively into the truck and industrial sectors.

Its main competitor in the postwar years, Cummins Engine Co. However, the trucking industry was booming and there appeared to be an almost limitless market for the powerful diesel engines. Allison had been added to GM in , during the same period of expansion and diversification that had seen the founding of Detroit Diesel.

Allison played an important role in developing engines for aircraft used by American and Allied forces during World War II, producing an estimated 70, aircraft engines during the war. After World War II GM decided that its future in the aircraft business rested with providing engines to other manufacturers and it merged its Detroit Diesel and Allison divisions. In spite of the recession in the auto industry in the mids, Detroit Diesel Allison continued to perform well.

By the beginning of the s, Cummins had assumed the top spot in the diesel engine market, but Detroit Diesel still controlled a respectable 30 percent of the domestic market. Over the next six years, however, Detroit Diesel underwent a precipitous decline, and by its market share had dwindled to less than 5 percent.

The reasons for this calamitous fall are complex. In a article in Automotive News, L. Koci, then general manager of DDA and later president of the independent Detroit Diesel, cited an influx of diesel engines from Europe and Japan as a major cause of the drop in DDA sales. Although imports certainly contributed to falling sales, Detroit Diesel had lost much of its market share to the American Cummins Engine Co.

A spokesman for Detroit Diesel after it had become an independent company acknowledged in a article in Financial World that 'in the late s and early s [DDA] was letting bad product out the door. The engines weren't performing well and we lost some good customers. It was a case of too little too late, and by GM began to look seriously for a buyer to take the beleaguered division off its hands. The company didn't look long.

Roger Penske, the famous auto racer and wunderkind of the auto business world, was immediately intrigued at the prospect of reviving the lumbering old giant of the auto industry. By early , Penske and GM had signed an agreement wherein Penske obtained ownership of 60 percent of Detroit Diesel's stock and GM secured the remaining 40 percent.

Penske retained much of the old personnel at Detroit Diesel, continuing to employ engineers and management who had a long association with GM. Rather than overhauling the company by purging it of its old brass, he simply realigned the corporate goals. However, he kept such long-standing Detroit Diesel employees as L. Koci, Detroit Diesel general manager at the time of the takeover.

In order to revive Detroit Diesel, Penske had to get results quickly. Within the first two years of independent operations Detroit Diesel had more than doubled its market share. The Detroit eConsulting team is ready to help you electrify your commercial vehicle fleet. We bring industry-leading eMobility expertise together with advanced technology, like our Detroit eFill commercial chargers, to provide you with one efficient, seamlessly integrated solution.

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