Speaking of this D-private company, Li Yifan was still very impressed. This company is a well-known automotive transmission manufacturer in Australia.

In the early years, it was once a subsidiary of BorgWarner, a large American machinery manufacturer. Later, in the 1980s, BorgWarner sold it to British Rubber and Tire Company for efficiency reasons.

However, due to poor management recently, British Rubber and Tire Company is planning to sell this Australian company specializing in the production of transmissions.

Speaking of this D-private company specializing in the manufacturing of automotive transmissions, it is also well-known in the automotive industry. It was founded in the 1920s and has a history of more than 80 years.

In the past, it mainly produced accessories for some Australian agricultural machinery companies. Later, with the rise of the Australian domestic automobile industry, it gradually changed careers and began to specialize in the design and research and development of automobile transmissions.

Later, as the American auto industry giant entered Australia, it was also acquired by BorgWarner, a giant American automobile supporting company, and brought them big customers like Ford and Chrysler.

Later, with the continuous decline of the American automobile industry giant in the Australian market, the company was sold to the British rubber and tire company by BorgWarner.

In Australia, their automobile market was originally dominated by the national brand Holden Automobile Company. Later, Holden was acquired by General Motors, and the arrival of Ford and Chrysler became the three-point world.

Later, with the massive invasion of Japanese cars, the Australian automobile market gradually began to be occupied by Japanese automobile manufacturers.

Although the local brand Holden is still a best-seller, the living space of Ford and Chrysler has been squeezed out a lot. As a result, the living space of D private companies has also begun to shrink.

British Rubber and Tire Company. After taking over this private company, although it still maintained customers like Ford and Chrysler, the British were unable to persist in the face of the aggressive Japanese.

They are planning to sell the transmission manufacturer they have recently.

According to the original history, this D-private company was finally acquired by a company called ion, but in the increasingly competitive automobile market, the D-private company's ability is really limited.

As a transmission, one of the three most important components in the automotive industry, general large automobile manufacturers tend to make their own products, such as GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and other companies, they all have their own transmission production and R&D departments.

There are only two transmission manufacturers in the world that are independent of automobile manufacturers. One is Japan's Aisin Seiko, and the other is considered a private company.

However, compared with Aisin Seiko's capabilities, the transmissions produced by D-privately do not have the upper hand in terms of the overall quality of the gearbox or the shift logic.

In this way, he could not do anything like Ainin Seiko, who was at ease in front of major automobile companies. You should know that the Japanese Ainin Seiko occupies a very high advantage in front of major automobile manufacturers around the world.

The transmissions of most Toyota models are provided by Aisin Seiko, and even Volkswagen in Germany is buying transmissions on a large scale from Aisin.

But D-private cannot do this, because their position in the world of the automobile industry is becoming increasingly marginalized because of the backwardness of production capacity.

The acquisition of their ION company also had some problems in its operations. By 2006, ION, the owner of D Private, had to declare bankruptcy.

After that, the company had to struggle to maintain it. They did not have the resources like Aixin and could become partners with companies like Toyota.

So they had to attack everywhere to find suitable partners, and finally they found Shuangyong Auto from South Korea. However, with the strong rise of Hyundai Kia, Shuangyong Auto's life was also difficult.

Their cooperation lasted only three years, but in the end they had to collect it. Shuanglong Automobile was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the D-private Transmission Company also ended in a similar situation.

Finally, in February 2009, D-private Company faced huge cash pressure because it owed employees' wages and had to file for bankruptcy protection.

Not long after this incident, the company was acquired by Geely, a Chinese automobile manufacturer.

At that time, it only cost less than 400 million yuan, or about 70 million Australian dollars. The acquisition did not cause much sensation at that time, because the Chinese automobile company then took on a snake's elephant swallowing, which swallowed another giant in the world's automobile industry, Volvo.

Because of this acquisition, the company has been very popular all over the world for a while.

But anyone who knows the industry actually knows that Geely's investment in acquiring Volvo is far less cost-effective than their acquisition of D-Private transmission company.

Because from a technical perspective, acquiring D-private Company can be said to fill a big gap in my country's automobile manufacturing industry.

Before entering the new millennium, several private and independent automobile manufacturers in China have begun to quietly enter the domestic automobile manufacturing market.

These companies are Great Wall, Geely, and Chery. However, because of their fame and scale, they have not done much. Later, after the new leadership team came to power and formulated the established national development strategy for the new decade, the automobile industry immediately ushered in a booming decade.

However, just as these domestic auto brands were ready to usher in the golden age of the automobile industry, they were embarrassed to find that they could not produce automatic transmissions in China.

You should know that in this idea, whether a car is of grade enough, the automatic transmission is the key. Moreover, in the next few years, as the city scale expands and road traffic begins to become congested, it is an inevitable trend to popularize automatic transmissions. Therefore, it is the top priority for these manufacturers to equip the cars they produce with a suitable automatic transmission.

But after searching, they found that there was no company in China that could independently produce automatic transmissions, even themselves, and those big brothers in state-owned enterprises were not good.

Speaking of this automatic transmission, it has actually become popular all over the world these days. However, the more popular four-speed automatic transmission is the more advanced one, the five-speed automatic transmission, while the top luxury cars have begun to be equipped with 6 as automatic transmissions.

However, domestic automobile manufacturers can only produce manual transmission cars. Although manual transmission cars have the advantages of being simple to maintain and cheap, there is still a big gap in driving comfort compared with automatic transmission cars, especially when facing increasing traffic congestion pressure.

So these domestic companies began to think about producing automatic transmissions themselves. In fact, it is not difficult to produce them. Just buy some mature gearboxes and disassemble them and then study them in reverse.

But when everyone was about to start doing this, they were stunned because the first thing they had to face was the patent blockade of automobile powerhouses such as Europe, America and Japan.

It is indeed not difficult to carry out reverse research, but it is rare to overcome it. The patent barriers that people have already laid out long ago. A small gearbox, the Japanese, American and Germans can apply for a patent for certain parts. After the entire gearbox, they have applied for no less than a thousand patents.

If you produce it, patents alone can make you feel embarrassed. Although in China, some things can be handled specially, it will take more than one or two days if we don’t play according to the rules. Many leaders of automobile companies are just going to do something special when they grit their teeth and simply plan to do something special, but they are still stunned.

Because after everyone took apart the gearbox they bought, they realized that this thing was not big, but even if everyone understood its working principle, even if everyone wanted to bite the bullet and imitate it, it would not work.

Because this small transmission requires a lot of precision processing methods, such as the hydraulic valve inside, the sensor components, and the powerful gear shift logic of the TCU, etc., it is not something that domestic companies can do now.

In the end, everyone had no choice but to pinch their noses and import this automatic transmission with the Japanese. But the Japanese are not fools. Why don’t you kill such a good opportunity?

If you want to buy it, you must also match the engine with our Japanese engine, or simply just do it directly on the price, so that your car will not show any advantages in price after it is launched...

In this way, domestic cars have been stuck in the transmission for ten years by foreign countries. It was not until Liji acquired D-private in 2009 that this situation was alleviated.

But by this time, foreign automobile companies have already started to play with dual clutch, or higher-level 8-speed transmissions.

But no matter what, this acquisition still makes up for a gap in my country's automobile manufacturing industry and transmission production field.

However, this acquisition did not show much advantage in the future. The 6AT transmission, the most proud of D-private, did not get popularized rapidly in China, because by this time the situation in China had changed...

Li Yifan, who roughly understands the history of domestic automobile development, always feels a little sorry for this company whenever he thinks of this.
Chapter completed!