Currency quandary: Dollar's strength in world markets hits many suppliers hard.(Magna International Inc.)

For Magna International Inc.'s 62 European factories, business was good last year. Volumes rose from a robust pace the year before, and Magna's average per-vehicle European content was up 8 percent for the year.

But you wouldn't necessarily have gleaned that from the numbers. By the time the finance department finished tallying the results, Magna's overall European sales were 3 percent lower than those of the year before.

The reason: a declining euro, a rising dollar.

At the end of 2000, the euro was worth 13 percent less against the dollar than it was on Dec. 31, 1999. For Magna, the math took a $369 million toll on the financial tabulations.

For economists, such an issue is almost academic, because big multinationals such as Magna probably buy and sell so much across national borders, it all evens out. But to a growing chorus of U.S. manufacturers, the solid strength of the dollar against other major world currencies is becoming a worrisome issue.

U.S. automakers and their suppliers believe the dollar may be just a little too healthy - that its rock-hard value is making them less agile than their overseas competitors at a time when the industry is obsessed with lowering …