Company Exports Ingenuity to China

Liu Zhu Xu spent Thursday morning in Oxnard sizing up the nine-piece mechanical monster he sees as his ticket to prosperity in China.

A 65,000-pound mass of conveyor belts, rubber hoses and other blue-and-orange painted parts, the automated assembly line will one day pump out more than 500 mufflers an hour in Jiaxing, China.

Xu said the $3.5-million machine may be the first of its kind in the People’s Republic, where most mufflers are made by hand.

“In China, this machine is very rare,” said Xu, vice general manager of Jiaxing Paula Muffler Co. Ltd., which plans to make the exhaust parts for Volkswagen. “We all feel very lucky.”

Xu may have been lucky to find Borla Performance Industries, the Oxnard-based manufacturer that purchased and overhauled the equipment originally used in a Mexicali factory.

Xu and several other company representatives Thursday toured Borla Performance Industries’ plant, where local workers have spent the past six weeks stripping the equipment, rebuilding components and repainting parts.

Alex Borla, Borla Performance Industries’ chief executive, said his workers finished in six weeks what was really a six-month job.

“It’s is a very big day,” said Borla, who moved his company from New York to Oxnard in 1983. “I have worked 12 hours a day, every day of the week including Christmas and New Year’s.”

Borla, a native of Romania, began in 1978 by making exhaust systems for Rolls-Royces and Bentleys. Today, at the 62,000-square-foot plant on five acres in south Oxnard, Borla’s company and its 100 employees produce more than 25,000 specialty exhaust systems a year ranging in price from $450 to $3,000.

Borla said the company has designed the exhaust system that Chrysler will use in its Viper race car in Daytona, Fla. But Borla said his customers are not just looking for a high-performance exhaust system.

“Sound is really important to a lot of people,” Borla said. “Not loud sound, but performance sound.”

Vasile Sabo, 53, one of Borla’s employees, grinned with pride as he eyed the muffler assembly line he tinkered on as an electrician. Sabo, who is also a graduate of the English as a second language academy that Borla started for employees, said he is confident the machinery will perform when it arrives in China.

“I’m a very calm man, and I don’t think there will be a problem,” said Sabo, who is Romanian. “If there is, maybe I’ll get to go help.”