Person Hours to Manufacture a Car

Yes, the U.S. car makers have more man-hours/car in their products.

You can find the numbers in the Automobile trade industry magazines and there are several reasons for the disparities.

a.) The U.S. manufacturers have agreements with labor unions that hold them back somewhat. (this is a fairly minor issue in the grand scheme of things).

b.) The Japanese makers built new plants that are highly automated so cars are largely assembled by machines instead of people.

c.) The U.S. manufacturers make more of their own parts and those labor hours get included in the overall stats. If a U.S. manufacturer makes it's own wheel rims, for example, and each rim takes 15 minutes then you've added 1 man-hour to the car's build. If you buy your rims from an outside supplier there is no man-hour figure assessed.

Check out the Harbour Report. It gives the hours it takes to build a car.

New report says American companies better yet in producing cars, but still not beating the Japanese.