ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL—One person was killed Tuesday morning, and 10 others were injured, in an explosion at an auto parts assembly plant here.

WENTZVILLE, MO— GM began construction yesterday on a $380 million expansion of its assembly plant here.

LAFAYETTE, IN—Subaru is planning to invest $75 million to expand its assembly plant here. The expansion will add 100 jobs.

MUNICH, Germany—Mexico, Brazil, Hungary and Slovakia are among the countries that could land a new BMW assembly plant.

TOKYO—Magna Steyr has signed a contract with Nissan to assemble Infiniti’s future entry-level luxury compact car. Production is expected to begin in 2014.

DETROIT—A reporter discovers that life on GM’s Cadillac assembly line is not that easy.

DETROIT—Harold “Red” Poling, Ford Motor Co.’s CEO in the early 1990s, has died. He was widely credited with imposing a tough restructuring program that turned around Ford’s money-losing North American automotive operations in the early 1980s.

AUBURN HILLS, MI—Brose North America Inc., a manufacturer of mechatronic components for automobiles, has purchased a 380,000-square-foot factory building in New Boston, MI. It will be the supplier’s third assembly plant in Michigan and its ninth in North America.

COLUMBUS, OH—Letting autoworkers sit while they reach into a car’s interior could help prevent shoulder and back strain, but another solution might be to tilt the entire car so that workers can stand up. That’s the finding of two recent studies, which tested two ways to protect autoworkers from injury.