Washington  - With the recession eating its way up the auto supply chain, two US corporations - Visteon and Japanese-owned Metaldyne - have filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Michigan-based Visteon, the former parts-making unit of Ford Motors, said Thursday in its Chapter 11 filing in Delaware that Ford would provide financing to help it operate during bankruptcy. Ford is the only one of the three top US car makers that is not being driven into bankruptcy.

Chassis manufacturer Metaldyne Corp, a Michigan-based unit of Japan's Asahi Tec Corp, said Wednesday in its filing to a New York bankruptcy court that it plans to sell its business.

Demand for new cars has plummeted more than 35 per cent since October amid a deepening recession in the United States. The domestic car industry has suffered tremendous losses as a result, but also shares blame for building less efficient cars that couldn't compete with greener foreign rivals.

Metaldyne's largest unsecured creditor with a 27.5-million-dollar claim is Chrysler, which is in the midst of the bankruptcy process in New York as it seeks approval for a new alliance with Italy's Fiat. Metaldyne has accumulated 929 million dollars in liabilities as of December 31, Asahi Tec said in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Visteons Chapter 11 filing listed 4.58 billion dollars in assets and 5.32 billion dollars in liabilities, including 862 million dollars owed to bondholders. The company, spun off from Ford in June 2000, hasnt reported an annual profit since that year.

Up to one-third of more than 4,000 US auto suppliers face "imminent financial distress," according to the Original Equipment Suppliers Association quoted by Bloomberg financial news service. (dpa)