Nation's First Multinational Automotive Manufacturer Now Operates Assembly Plants in US, and UK . . .

HASTINGS, HAWKES BAY, NEW ZEALAND, October 15, 2014 /EINPresswire.com/ -- New Zealand's first and only automotive full service factory-to-showroom manufacturer's status as an authentic multinational has been acknowledged .The British government rates Gibbs Technologies as a showcase example of what it describes as the successful collaboration of "British engineering and American manufacturing."

The accolade for Gibbs Technologies controlled by New Zealander Alan Gibbs was made during an official British government Cabinet-level visit to the firm's factory at Auburn Hills, Detroit.

The amphibian manufacturer is a photo-fit of a new trans Atlantic production strategy in which Britain focuses on the engineering side, leaving the mass assembly manufacturing to the United States.

Gibbs Technologies also fits the priority trans-Atlantic production strategy criterion because the amphibian maker has pointedly kept its production in the English-speaking sphere.

The company straddles the zone with design and conceptual work in New Zealand, consumer vehicle assembly in Detroit, and more specialised production of its purpose-built amphibians in Nuneaton in Warwickshire.

The major point of difference between the status of Gibbs Technologies in the amphibian field and those who have gone before is that its vehicles are designed to be as easily handled on the road as they are in the water.

Founder Alan Gibbs has referred to his amphibian fleet as the most important benchmark in the automotive world since the advent of Henry Ford's Model T.

His series of amphibians ranges from sports models to heavy utilities and purpose built amphibians for the military.

Mr Gibbs has a long association with the automotive business starting when he sought to assemble in New Zealand the nation's first home-brand saloon car, a move scuttled by the heavy protectionism of the import-control era. He then took over a substantial automotive service business and went on to become a household business name when he became a key figure in the restructuring of the hitherto state owned telecommunications monopoly.

A patron of the arts in his native New Zealand, he has an immense statue farm, he brings to the amphibian series a strong designer's eye.

The combined U.K. and U.S. collaboration is said to be heavily protected by patents including those centred on switching over between sea propulsion and the on-wheels public road handling with its compliance demands.

Gibbs Technologies has also had the advantage of refining with its own propulsion enhancing techniques the original jet thrust mechanism devised by fellow New Zealander C.W.F Hamilton.

Written by Peter Isaac
Specialist Technical Journalist for Manufacturers Success Connection
peter.isaac@xtra.co.nz
© 2014 MSCNewsWire

Max Farndale
Manufacturers Success Connection
64 6 870 4506
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