Band 6+: The chart below gives information on the amount of time taken to manufacture a vehicle by four US-based car producers between 1998 and 2002. Provide an overview of the information by identifying and describing the key details, and include comparisons where appropriate.

The given line chart compares how long automobiles were made by four US car manufacturers of Nissan, Daimler Chrysler (DC), General Motor (GM) and Ford in the period of 1998 and 2002.

Overall, while the downward trend is dominant in the chart, with Nissan witnessing the most dramatic decline, Ford, on the other hand, slightly increased. While Nissan consumed the highest time production at first, it was DC which took the longest time in the last year of the period.

In 1998, the amount of time required to manufacture a Nissan car was the highest with about 37 hours. Following by an exacerbation in 2 subsequent years, then Nisan’s time manufacturing moderately fell and reached its lowest record at approximately 21 hours, representing a big progress of reduction in time requirement. An opposite trend can be seen in Ford’s time requirement. 25 hours were the time needed to produce an automobile, as nearly three-fourths of Nissan’s. The figure then went up steadily to 27 hours in the period of 3 years, and ended at 26 hours, higher than the first start point.

Regarding GM’s time production, the data underwent a steady fall of 2 hours each year, with a total of nearly 8 hours, starting from 34 hours. DC first started at about 34 hours, then went down by 2 hours in 1999. Remaining stable for 2 years, the time producing a DC car then considerably decreased to nearly 28 hours.