WHILE car making is becoming leaner, cars are becoming safer.
Thus the car-repair shops could borrow assembly-line lessons from the lean car factory, and the airlines could concentrate on the end-to-end customer experience of queues, delays and more queues.
How do we get clean, green, lean cars when some motorists still aspire to mean machines?
General Motors got there early, introducing its skinny, streamlined Lean Machine concept car in 1982 at the World of Motion exhibition at Epcot in Florida.
The news spread quickly, and people leaned out car windows with Russian and South Ossetian flags, spraying pedestrians with Champagne.
It has leant on car makers to introduce new models that run on ethanol and, this month, the sales tax on such cars was cut.
In "Come On USA," he denounces America while insisting, almost threateningly, "I cry when I listen to Springsteen"; two songs of love lean on car crash imagery.
As he leaned through car windows, sweat glistened on his face and soaked through the back of his blue button-down shirt.
In rebel territory, skinny young men, toting Kalashnikov rifles and wearing lucky charms around their necks, lean into car windows, blow smoke and demand tolls.
Especially in lean times, car buyers have been catching on to Hyundai's blossoming talents — and wondering why they should spend more for the boldface name that offers no apparent advantage.
