ons which includes cash and marketable securities, as well as $3.0 billion invested in short-term fixed income securities of the Corporation's Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association Trust.(5) Excludes the effects of purchase accounting adjustments related to General Motors' acquisition of Hughes in 1985. (6) Excludes Hughes Series A Preferred Stock dividends payable to General Motors. (7) Latin America excludes the Middle East and Africa.Ford Racing Advanced Technology developed a Formula One steering wheel, beginning with a plastic-resin prototype made from a very detailed CAD drawing and a rapid prototyping technique called stereo lithography.This method allows virtually overnight production of prototype parts, and another advantage is that it gets the piece off the computer screen and into people's hands so they can hold and feel a real thing.In the case of the steering wheel, we received great feedback from the drivers that would not have been possible had they just looked at a computer screen or a drawing.Another application of rapid prototyping was in our development project for new NASCAR racing cylinder heads. We developed a complete CAD surface for the new head, then used our stereo lithography technique to make a plastic-resin head right from the CAD drawings. This plastic-resin piece can be bolted to a block to test all the aspects of fit and packaging, and it also can be used for actual flow testing without ever doing a casting.All told, we got the cylinder head we wanted for racing in record time. We also improved the engineering development process, and now it's ready for use on the next production engine project.Go on to...At last count, the General Motors SALES, SERVICE & MARKETING group was selling 8.6 million cars and trucks per year to customers worldwide. The big question facing our sales and marketing pros is: How can we build even stronger brands that eclipse the competition, endure in the marketplace, ...
