ANN ARBOR—Want to make a car? Want to establish your own auto manufacturing company? It’s all possible through the Internet Public Library‘s WebINK, an Internet newsletter for kids.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the automobile, “So You Want to Make a Car” is a virtual tour of an automotive plant, designed for children aged 7 years and older. Available on the World Wide Web at http://www.ipl.org/webink/autotour/, the virtual auto tour is sponsored by the Academic Outreach Program at the University of Michigan.

Based on tours and interviews at Chrysler’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., “So You Want to Make a Car” is a comprehensive look at today’s car manufacturing process, focusing on the educational, personal and professional skills necessary to work in engineering, management and assembly. The tour is followed by a decision-making game where students take a spin at forming their own car companies and links to a variety of related “car” pages.

The tour includes pictures, movies, and text of the assembly line from “getting the parts” to putting them together with the aid of robots. Interviews with union safety representatives and workers involved in assembly planning are available as are links to other sites such as solar cars and other unique autos and their histories. Puzzles and other games are also available as is a variety of automotive facts including the history of cars, instructions on how to build an electric motor from household materials, and a visit to the Indy 500.

Did you know that it takes more than 16 miles of conveyors to transfer car bodies from start to finish along the “line”? That’s more than 230 football fields in length. Did you know that the average monthly electricity bill for an auto plant is for more than 12,000 years.

Links can take the tour visitor to information about automobiles in art and literature as well as in history and politics. You can find out about “Those Women Drivers” and slogans used for pioneer cars by their manufacturers and dealers. You can explore automotive developments from 1600 through the major developments of today. Did you know that if an Indy Car engine were installed in the average riding lawn mower, it could cut a half-acre lawn in about 5.6 seconds? All this and more is available through U-M’s “So You Want to Make a Car.”

The Internet Public Library is a project based at the U-M School of Information and is partially supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The library began as a graduate student project in 1995 and is now staffed by professional librarians with assistance from students and volunteer librarians from around the world. The library maintains a collection of network-based ready reference works, responds to reference queries, creates resources for children and young adults, evaluates and categorizes resources on the Internet, and provides a space for exhibitions.

Academic Outreach ProgramSchool of InformationAndrew W. Mellon Foundation