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A really important characteristic of the OEM's (Original Equipment Manufacturer) that arrived in Brazil during the last decade is that all of them launched vehicles models that were conceived, designed and developed abroad, normally in the Company Headquarters. The first effect of this tendency affects certain technical specifications such as raw materials or even those components that were not validated for the local market conditions. The majority of the technical specifications are over dimensioned in relation to current local regulations in the Brazilian Country. According to Pascoal (2007), another effect is that these vehicles have an end of the product life cycles sooner than the Brazilian branch offices. This condition implies that even after the end of production of these vehicles in the European factories, these models will continue in the production line at the Brazilian Factories for several years (in some cases).

A frequent situation in the national automobile industry is the each time bigger rapidity that just-launched models are evolved (the so called face-lifts). Within this highly dynamic context, the solutions and technical proposals developed by the local product engineering have two main guidelines. The first one is to work on product evolutions which goal is to make the vehicles far more attractive and differentiated with respect to the competition and also to the previous model. The second one is to constantly search the standardization or the modularization of parts between the different models and versions of vehicles, thus reducing the costs of investments and providing scale profits.