Suppliers put meat on bones of NAIAS show cars

Inside and underneath the shiny new models at January's North American International Auto Show is the work of a fiercely competitive supply base.

Tough times for Ford and General Motors are translating into tough times for many U.S.-based suppliers.

Even so, there is a lot of innovation and other good things happening among domestic suppliers-so much that “I'm pretty optimistic about the way things look for the U.S. suppliers,” said Jim Gillette, Director of Supplier Analysis for CSM Worldwide. “We've got some really premium auto suppliers here.”