When Nguyen T. Binh at last arrived at the pagoda's gate, after speeding along a narrow highway on his Honda Dream motorbike for three hours, he turned to his companion and remarked, "that was horrible, wasn't it?"
Reflecting on his the fresh,terrifying visions that passed in front of his eyes: of 40-year old Russian tractors lurching onto the road; of bicycles balancing ox-sized loads of hay; of actual oxen hauling wooden trailers; and of rickety, five ton Chinese-made trucks passing each other, barely; his companion quickly agreed that he would not soon forget that traffic.
"What traffic?" said Binh, dusty and red-eyed. "I'm talking about the soot from those trucks!"
With roadways coming alive in a frenetic mix of vehicles and destinations, combined with a rising per capita income and a newly opened market, today's Vietnam is apparently vision of loveliness to the world's auto makers.Meet Murray Gilbert. As country manager for Ford's nearly completed $100 million auto plant near Hanoi, the pleasure of inciting a four-wheeled revolution will be partly his. For him, every sweating cow, set of shoulders, and motorbike is a presumably another potential Ford flatbed, "Made in Vietnam." "We're the largest truck-maker in the world. Trucks are a Vietnam need and a Ford strength, a perfect match," said Gilbert, observing that two-thirds of the vehicles bought here are commercial. That sector's growth is 18% yearly, versus six or seven per cent for cars.
Ford plans to assemble two and four-ton trucks and vans, with cars slated for the future. "In 15 years well split the market with Toyota," he declared.
For the first time this generation, Ford, one of America's biggest companies, is making the bold commitment to setting up in an Asian country for a market that is just being born.
In those luxurious moments just prior to the opening of a massive, sparkling automotive plant such as Fords, the excitement surrounding the project can be palpable. Something that works, the result of years of calculating, engineering and negotiation, all comes together, to produce buffed, handsome machines, one after the other. It is a winning moment.

The big picture, where Ford and most of the world's other most powerful automakers fit into Vietnam, is clear. In the middle 1970s, American automakers decided to pull out of Asia to focus on preserving their US market share from their new Japanese contenders. In Thailand, plants were sold to Japanese firms, most notably Toyota, which now enjoy a 90% market share in Asia.
Twenty years later one can imagine executives, tweaked by tales of 10% yearly growth, huddled in Detroit boardrooms around maps locating Asia. Their bonus in the hyper-competitive and nationalistic world of auto making was that their rivalries with the Japanese had been well honed in the North American market and stoked for a fresh battleground.
The notion of a unified trade zone ASEAN completed the vision of an ever-expanding market for the next 30 years or more. Cars and trucks made in one country for export to its neighbor could for the first time be unimpeded from import tariff walls such as those that currently protect Japanese ventures in Thailand and elsewhere.
For two of the Big Three automakers, a few years ago, their fingers stopped on Vietnam. The draw? First, the only regional country with no auto industry. Steady 8% or higher growth over the last decade has had opportunity-seekers pegging Vietnam's market as "Thailand 20 years ago or Taiwan 30 years ago."