Prior to the 1980s, most manufacturing facilities were owned by the Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler) and AMC Their U.S. market share has dropped steadily as numerous foreign-owned car companies have built factories in the U.S. Many universities teach and generate automotive-specific expertise, for example Automotive Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences Landshut, Automotive Technology and Management at Coburg University and Vehicle Technology and Mechatronics at Munich University of Applied Sciences.
These policies, however, resulted not in the creation of Canadian assemblers, but the domination of US makers as the smaller Canadian operations were forced out of business by the huge financial demands and technological innovations required by the fast-developing industry.
As a result, in the early 1960s, the federal government embarked on a number of initiatives to boost exports from Canada to the United States, and also to prompt the US car companies — and the American …