Every 60 seconds, to a robotic burst of Mozart's Symphony No. 40, a new Kia sedan or SUV emerges from beneath a cascade of sparks at the South Korean carmaker's gleaming assembly plant in this northwestern town. Ex-communist Slovakia is fast becoming Europe's Detroit: a humming automotive haven where – for now, at least – there's no sign of the crisis gripping America's Big Three. “We're talking about adding jobs, not eliminating them,” says Jun-Bum Park, general manager of Kia Motors Slovakia, which opened the sprawling $1.36 billion complex in Zilina in December 2006. Maria Novakova, secretary-general of the Automotive Industry Association of Slovakia, forecasts the creation of up to 30,000 new jobs between now and 2010 as the country's fledgling automotive sector prepares to shift into higher gear. “We're in a good position to grow,” she says. “Frankly, we don't want to be compared to Detroit because we don't want to end up like Detroit.” To be sure, the US, Canada, China, Japan and Russia all dwarf Slovakia in sheer number of cars produced. Japan turned out nearly 11.6 million vehicles last year, and the Big Three churned out just under 10.8 million. But the tiny nation, which also hosts PSA Peugeot Citroen in the western town of Trnava and Volkswagen AG in the capital, Bratislava, leads the world in per-capita production. Slovakia made a record 571,071 cars in 2007 – 105.7 units for every 1,000 Slovaks. Industry officials say the East European nation of 5.4 million will top that this year with 610,000 cars, and it hasn't even hit full capacity yet. Analysts say carmakers are drawn to Slovakia because it has a cheap but skilled work force, low taxes, weak labor unions, good highways and other logistics, and a strategic location in the geographic heart of Europe that's close to emerging markets in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.
