Detroit model is outdated: veteran auto exec

By Chang-Ran Kim, Asia autos correspondent

TOKYO (Reuters) - As a young engineer at Honda Motor Co Ltd in the early 1970s, Shoichiro Irimajiri recalls thinking the Japanese carmaker could never hope to rival the might of Ford Motor Co.

In 1973, the Detroit giant shipped three dozen of its Galaxie sedans over to be fitted for Honda's CVCC engine system to clear new emissions regulations in the United States.

"I took a spin in that car and thought to myself, 'We could never build anything like this,'" Irimajiri, now co-chairman of Japanese parts maker Asahi Tec, told Reuters, remembering the exhilarating ride of the high-powered machine.

"For me, the Big Three were at the pinnacle of the industry, somewhere above the clouds."

It didn't take long for Irimajiri to change his mind.

Dispatched to Ford for four months for the CVCC project the following year, he noticed something odd. His counterparts in Dearborn, Michigan seemed to know less than the Honda team, who were schooled in the complete engineering process -- from the drawing board to the testing ground.

At first, he assumed he was meeting only junior staff, but his conviction grew as he got to know engineers higher up the ranks.

"That was 1974, when I started to think we had a shot at beating them," said the 68-year-old Irimajiri, a well-known, long-time industry insider who also had a stint on the board of top U.S. supplier Delphi after leaving Honda in 1992.

"And, when I became head of Honda's U.S. manufacturing operations 10 years later, we were on an equal footing, with the Accord on the bestseller list.

"The Big Three lost the leadership status 20 years ago."

As U.S. lawmakers prepare to discuss a possible multi-billion dollar bailout of cash-strapped General Motors, Ford and Chrysler LLC, many seasoned industry hands like Irimajiri are questioning their future in the long haul.

Irimajiri, known in the United States as "Mr Iri," and once courted to join GM as a top executive, believes the U.S. business model, and even its societal structure, is not geared toward making it as a successful carmaker in what is a brutally competitive business with many strong rivals.

The main obstacle, he says, is a pervasive mentality that engineers and factory workers are second-class citizens. That damages motivation on the ground, where much of the difficult work takes place. Not so in Japan, he says.

"Detroit has some great technology, but there's a big difference between the way technology is defined in the U.S. and in Japan," he said.

"In the U.S., it's all about the invention, the patent. But in reality, there are many stages: innovation, application, and applying the technology in an actual, winning product with feedback from consumers. The latter stages, for an American, is grunt work. And that's where they lose competitiveness."