Optional Moulded Panels for Lifestyle Cars

Lifestyle cars are inexpensive, are designed for urban rather than interstateuse, and are intended to express something about the personality of thosewho own and drive them. Plastic components and subassemblies will playa major role in achieving this revisionary automotive aim.

Excel Timbalex Ltd., part of Britain's Excel Group, has been involved fornearly three years in developing the best-known lifestyle car--the MCC(Micro Compact Car), a joint venture between Germany's Mercedes Benz andthe Swiss watch company, Swatch (see related story, p. 53). It is possiblethat the car's exterior panels, made in GE's PBT, may be chosen and fittedby the dealer, according to customer choice.

Excel Timbalex, with two other providers, has been working on this panelproject and strategy and planning manager Kevin O'Hara believes his companyhas an inside edge. Excel Timbalex is European licensee for a wood-grainsurface effect created by the Japanese company Cubic (see June/July 1997IMI, p. 68). The raw materials for the effect are supplied as a hard filmon a roll. An activator dissolves the carrying medium leaving the inksfloating on a tank of water. The moulded item is then dipped into the fluid,although O'Hara is keen to stress that the process is quite distinct fromdip printing.

The process can be used to cover complex surfaces and Excel Timbalex hasalready demonstrated this, having emerged in 1995 as the successful moulderout of a quartet invited to provide a heater control panel in Makrolon2607 for Ford's compact hatchback, the Fiesta. Another advantage is thatExcel Timbalex has also mastered the art of laser-etching such panels togive crisp definition to the backlit symbols and alphanumerics.

Lifestyle cars are not limited to the MCC since the same marketing principlescould be applied to Ford's Ka, Fiat's Cinquecento, and Nissan's Micra hatchbacks,amounting to some 750,000 cars a year in Europe. "Or 10 Timbalex facilities,"explains O'Hara.

The process does not simulate only wood grain; for the MCC, a special variant,based on four colours, is being tested. A metallic paint effect has alsobeen achieved and this has been adopted in a separate development for thecreation of manual-shift gearknobs that include a backlit illuminationof the shift pattern, another area in which O'Hara believes Timbalex willshow significant advantages. Compression moulding has traditionally beenmore common than injection moulding with such items, says O'Hara. But Excel,having discovered a way of getting rid of the witness line (the detailsremain secret), moulds the knobs in ABS with, possibly, a tactile surface,paints them white, substrates them with Timbalex, laser-etches the graphics,and then adds the LED. "In fact," says O'Hara, "it wouldbe difficult to do all this any other way." The net result is a decorativesurface effect during the day and a lighting effect at night.

Excel Timbalex is aiming to offer a service that covers different trimlevels for all the variants of a car model, from entry-level mouldingsto real wood effects. Work is already proceeding with a wood specialist.The advantages would be economies of scale together with tighter controlof colour matching. The latter is harder to achieve if the parts come fromdifferent sources. O'Hara acknowledges that the service would have to fitin with car manufacturers' differing sourcing preferences. Ford, for instance,prefers to work to a basic mould and to subcontract out the variations,whereas GM prefers a logistically-based stratagem whereby moulds are madeand distributed among the suppliers.

Contact Information:
Excel Timbalex Ltd.
Mr. Alastair Johnstone
Unit B-12 Telford Rd.
Bicester, Oxon, UK
Tel: +44 (1) 869 321100
Fax: +44 (1) 869 252715