Editorial: Metals win one small war

While the substitution battle goes on between metals and other mater ials (notably plastics), some skirmishes are being won by the metals industry.

Just the other day, for example, General Motors in the U.S. said it was scrapping a $1-billion plastic sports car project because, the auto giant said, the whole venture has proven too costly. Earlier, the company had said that, by about the year 1990, it would be turning out more than one million plastic-body cars. GM has already introduced plastic-body technology into one of its models, the Fiero, although neither Ford nor Chrysler has committed to the idea as yet.

The news from GM should give some encouragement to steel and aluminum producers and may in fact be a further signal that use of plastics in cars has gone just about as far as it can. The auto industry is still trying hard to substitute metal engine parts with plastic materials, but observers are predicting that development of an almost entire engine using such materials is a long, long way down the road.

Substitution, though, in cars as in other areas, can’t be lightly dismissed. It is a continuing threat to metals producers. The use of nickel in cars, for instance, we were informed recently by the Nickel Development Institute, has declined considerably in recent years in favor of plastic components.

Another metal, copper, has been under severe attack not only in the auto industry (where, for example, aluminum has made big inroads in components such as engine radiators), but in the telecommunications field, where fibre-optics have been making great headway.

Mobilized to fight such incursions, of course, are the industry organizations such as the Nickel Institute and the Copper and Brass Development Association, which are charged generally with not only defending existing markets for the metals but actively unearthing new ones.

They are enjoying considerable success in the fight but certainly have no sense of complacency about it. Substitution, after all, as Nickel Institute President Hans Schade puts it, is a permanent process.