GKN Driveline is the world’s leading supplier of automotive driveline components and systems. As a global company serving the world’s leading vehicle manufacturers, GKN Driveline develops, builds and supplies an extensive range of automotive driveline components – for use in the smallest ultra-low-cost car to the most sophisticated premium vehicle demanding the most complex driving dynamics.
A division of GKN plc, it employs around 22,000 people at 56 locations across 22 countries.
GKN Driveline is the world’s largest producer of constant-velocity joints, which it pioneered for use in automobiles. Its other products include sideshafts, propshafts, power transfer units, differentials, AWD couplings, disconnects, electric rear axles, and electric drive transmissions.
The origin of GKN – Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds – goes back to 1759, and the founding of the Dowlais Ironworks by the industrialists Thomas Lewis and Isaac Wilkinson.
The company took part in the railway boom in the early 1800s with its production of iron, then steel in the 1860s, and, after the First World War, the automotive industry.
GKN evolved geographically from its British base in the early nineteenth century to the USA and Western Europe.