Tune into the Net to watch your car being built

General Motors (GM) appears likely to be the first vehicle maker to use Webcams extensively to enable car buyers to see their vehicles being built to order over the Internet.

By the end of this year, GM expects to start e-mailing customers to tell them when their cars reach assembly locations with Web camera points.

The programme will be confined initially to a few North American plants which specialise in fast building-to-order in as little as 10 days.

Several car companies have been considering such a scheme, but one of the big problems is the very public embarrassment if there are delays in delivery or glitches on the assembly line when it is live on the Internet.