Magna assembles some pretty cool cars that you might not know are built by the company. The company builds the BMW Z4 and the Toyota Supra. They build the Mercedes-Benz G-Class. They also assemble the Chinese-market Arcfox.
Magna also, later this year, will start assembly of the Fisker Ocean. One core service the company has been talking about lately is how anyone can ring up Magna and the company can build them a car.
Let’s say you’re a new billionaire and you want to start a car company. You could hire a bunch of people, build a manufacturing plant, find suppliers and build up a supply chain, and then go through the testing and legal challenges it takes to put a quality product out on the road.
Or you could just get Magna to build it.
Recently, we were at a Magna event with the company’s chief executive, Seetarama (Swamy) Kotagiri, and he was discussing this very thing.
Magna employs 163,000 people worldwide, manufactures at 360 sites globally, and rung up $36 billion in sales in 2021. It’s easy to understand why Swamy can make the claim to build anything — the company has the resources.
But can the company really build anything if you have the money?
Yes, as it turns out. We decided to take the opportunity to ask a very serious, extremely timely question. “Can you make [us] an Iron Man suit?”
Yes, an Iron Man suit from the Marvel comic books and Marvel Cinematic Universe. You know, a completely serious and not juvenile question for a chief executive of a company that is larger than some OEM automakers.
“Do you have the money?” Clearly, he wants to make sure we’re good for it. Being journalists, he’s right to question our funding.
“If you have the money,” he says, “we can do it.”
So there you have it. Not only will Magna assemble some of the newest EVs on the market, but if you want, it’ll also build you an Iron Man suit.
You heard it here first, folks.
