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[Varche]

Interesting looking couple of live programmes next week from the BMW Mini factory.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34488480

I have only been to two production lines. Opel in Germany in 1968 and Jaguar in 1982.

The Opel was an eye opener. In those days new owners were encouraged to run their cars in at moderate speeds (anyone remember that!?) . Well as each car came off the line it was started up and the engine revved to within an inch of its life then front brakes were tested on a rolling road, then the rears before the driver catapultated the car off the rollers and squealed out of the door at max revs in each gear, the car jumping with each gear change as it headed off to be parked somewhere. There was a squad of drivers who did that all day. My brother got a job doing that in Germany at a Volvo plant

The Jaguar trip was excellent (we had a Daimler 4.2 at the time) and after visiting the various plants (I loved the engine test room) you got to actually drive test cars around the factory roads.

Anyone else got any memories of visiting car factories?.

[Andy B]

TVR at Blackpool.  Most memorable for the smell of resin in the GRP area!

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

TVR at Blackpool. Most memorable for the smell of resin in the GRP area!

Enough to get you 'high' and fail to notice that your brand new 3000M had broken down two miles from the factory.

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

Interesting looking couple of live programmes next week from the BMW Mini factory.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34488480

I have only been to two production lines. Opel in Germany in 1968 and Jaguar in 1982.

The Opel was an eye opener. In those days new owners were encouraged to run their cars in at moderate speeds (anyone remember that!?) . Well as each car came off the line it was started up and the engine revved to within an inch of its life then front brakes were tested on a rolling road, then the rears before the driver catapultated the car off the rollers and squealed out of the door at max revs in each gear, the car jumping with each gear change as it headed off to be parked somewhere. There was a squad of drivers who did that all day. My brother got a job doing that in Germany at a Volvo plant

The Jaguar trip was excellent (we had a Daimler 4.2 at the time) and after visiting the various plants (I loved the engine test room) you got to actually drive test cars around the factory roads.

Anyone else got any memories of visiting car factories?.

Sounds about right.

So much for gently running in the new engine.

[GastronomicKleptomaniac]

VW factory tour is well worth a visit.

[Kevin Wood]

Went round the bini factory a few years back. Nobody there on the whole. Just machines making cars.

Spent ages trying to find the car one of the blokes in the group had ordered. 

[Nick W]

Went on an ARCC sponsored tour around Ryton in the early 90s.


We were standing in the delivery bay, and someone pointed out that all of the 2door Peugeot 306 quarter panels seemed to have a dent in the roof pillar. This was put down to a trick of the light.
Sometime later on the assembly line, another wag suggested we'd brought the same light with us, as the assembled bare metal 306 bodyshells still seemed to have a dent in the rear roof pillars.


In the paint shop, the guide was bragging about how much the booths had cost and how quickly a car was painted, until another visitor pointed at a freshly painted car and said "If I painted a car that badly in my garage, I'd be upset!" And they still had dents in the rear pillars!

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Not a factory, but had a guided tour of Blydenstien / DTV workshops at Shepreth in the distant past, which was a fascinating day.

[Andy H]

Vauxhall's Luton plant in 1982.

I had applied for a sponsored place to go and do an engineering degree at university - we had a day of weird aptitude tests followed by a tour of the body plant. I didn't get a place and I think they shut the training centre later that year.

Most of my friends had relatives who had started as apprentices and worked at Vauxhalls all their lives - it was the end of an era 

My enduring memory is of the enormous body panel press.