Not sure what this means..Fiat changing platform on products

Just like the foreign car companies did, the foreign parts companies have also moved here and set up shop. And there's a lot of them, making stuff you never realized or thought about. So what is "American" is more blurred than ever.

I worked in the engineering lab of a parts manufacturing company from '73 to '08. Gabriel shocks were part of what we made. In the 70s and 80s our only competition was Monroe shocks. By the mid to late 80s we started seeing Bilstein, Sachs, and Boge from Germany, KYB, Tokico and Showa from Japan, and Cofap from Brazil, all fighting for a piece of the action, in both OE and aftermarket. Most of them have built plants here, mostly down south. They have also set up engineering facilities, mostly in southeast Michigan.

Gabriel has an international presence, with affiliates in India, Mexico, South Africa, Europe and several south american countries, that they license their designs to. Unfortunately the Gabriel design has it's roots in the 40s with a few upgrades in the name of longer product life while the foreigners have newer designs that work better so they now have most of the OEM business. Senior managment never worried about it because they were selling millions of $5 shocks to Sears back in the 80s. That strategy is not working too good these days.

Back in the 80s Lee Iacocca challenged the foreign companies saying "If you want to sell cars here, build them here" or something like that. So they did, and now here we are with the very blurred scenario of what's American.

So that F-150 built in Dearborn might have Tokico shocks built in Kentucky, or who knows what else built by a foreign parts company somewhere in the southern part of the U.S. or northern Mexico.