Porsche Factory Tour, finally made it!
01-25-2003, 07:03 PM
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Porsche Factory Tour, finally made it!
I finally went down to Stuttgart to go on the factory tour. My friend stopped in town to visit and we decided to go to Munich and Stuttgart was on the way. We didn't have any reservations for the tour though. Once again, Porsche came through like champs.
We rolled into Zuffenhausen at about 830 and got off at the Porscheplatz station. We had to ask around in the show room to find out where the tours started and they pointed us in the right direction. The tour didn't start til 1000 so we made our way over to the museum to see what was going on. It is closed until february. We asked another man at a gate to find out where to go and he told us that you have to sign up 6 weeks in advance for the tour but they could help us out in new car pick-up and at least show us some new cars if we couldn't go on the tour.
We went to new car pick-up and found the lady in charge of the tours. She said to come back in an hour. We did. She managed to squeeze us into the tour and I would like to thank her again for that. It was the most amazing thing that I have ever seen.
Tour starts...
history -
engine room - (each engine built by one person BY HAND and tested to at least the advertised HP) We also happened to see them building all of the nice new cayenne engines. One word. BEAST.
On to the drivetrain, the marriage, the body works, the interior. It was all very interesting but would take way too much time to tell.
Here is what I found out though that i thought was really interesting. The factory is the only factory that is on more than one floor. It uses elevators. There is only one robot, it installs the windsheilds. The workers are allowed to drink and smoke while on the job. It takes 6 cows to cover a completely loaded 911. All of the cars are made for orders only, no dealership orders. They are all made on the same assembly line. Approx. 800 workers touch each car. Until 6 months ago, each car was signed by its painter. They are still hand painted. The metal body parts are stamped by BMW. The first production VW was built in a building in the back parking lot of Porsche. It takes about 13 months to recieve a new Turbo after order. This is the best: Each car is test driven also, but not how you think. There is no test track. They are all taken out on the streets of Stuttgart and driven around town. They are pushed to their absolute limits on the autobahn the first time around so don't think you are the first person to redline your car in top gear!
It was a great experience and i can't wait to go back in a couple of months. Munich was great as well. Wonderful city, great bars and nice people. GREAT BEER.
Last thing, can anyone tell me why there are holes in the jackpoints on our cars???
We rolled into Zuffenhausen at about 830 and got off at the Porscheplatz station. We had to ask around in the show room to find out where the tours started and they pointed us in the right direction. The tour didn't start til 1000 so we made our way over to the museum to see what was going on. It is closed until february. We asked another man at a gate to find out where to go and he told us that you have to sign up 6 weeks in advance for the tour but they could help us out in new car pick-up and at least show us some new cars if we couldn't go on the tour.
We went to new car pick-up and found the lady in charge of the tours. She said to come back in an hour. We did. She managed to squeeze us into the tour and I would like to thank her again for that. It was the most amazing thing that I have ever seen.
Tour starts...
history -
engine room - (each engine built by one person BY HAND and tested to at least the advertised HP) We also happened to see them building all of the nice new cayenne engines. One word. BEAST.
On to the drivetrain, the marriage, the body works, the interior. It was all very interesting but would take way too much time to tell.
Here is what I found out though that i thought was really interesting. The factory is the only factory that is on more than one floor. It uses elevators. There is only one robot, it installs the windsheilds. The workers are allowed to drink and smoke while on the job. It takes 6 cows to cover a completely loaded 911. All of the cars are made for orders only, no dealership orders. They are all made on the same assembly line. Approx. 800 workers touch each car. Until 6 months ago, each car was signed by its painter. They are still hand painted. The metal body parts are stamped by BMW. The first production VW was built in a building in the back parking lot of Porsche. It takes about 13 months to recieve a new Turbo after order. This is the best: Each car is test driven also, but not how you think. There is no test track. They are all taken out on the streets of Stuttgart and driven around town. They are pushed to their absolute limits on the autobahn the first time around so don't think you are the first person to redline your car in top gear!
It was a great experience and i can't wait to go back in a couple of months. Munich was great as well. Wonderful city, great bars and nice people. GREAT BEER.
Last thing, can anyone tell me why there are holes in the jackpoints on our cars???
01-25-2003, 07:59 PM
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Burning Brakes
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You are supposed to use a jack adapter to lift the car, and the hole helps keep the car from sliding off the jack. See cheesy ascii art below.
\___| |___/ <=====jack point
____| |____ <====adapter
\----------/ <====jack
\___| |___/ <=====jack point
____| |____ <====adapter
\----------/ <====jack
01-26-2003, 01:40 AM
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Burning Brakes
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A trip to Stuttgart is on my list of things to do in my life... others are to attend 24h du Mans and other events.
Thanks for the story of your trip. <img border="0" alt="[cherrsagai]" title="" src="graemlins/drink.gif" />
Thanks for the story of your trip. <img border="0" alt="[cherrsagai]" title="" src="graemlins/drink.gif" />
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01-26-2003, 12:46 PM
#8
Race Car
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by exc911ence:
<strong>Exactly where did the painters sign the cars? I'd be interested to find the signatures on mine!
</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">That was my first reaction, then I remembered that most of our cars were built in the Audi factory so this may not apply.
<strong>Exactly where did the painters sign the cars? I'd be interested to find the signatures on mine!
</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">That was my first reaction, then I remembered that most of our cars were built in the Audi factory so this may not apply.
01-26-2003, 02:44 PM
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I'm not sure where they are signed. I think somewhere in the back behind the bumper or some other snap on plastic, which i forgot to mention. All of the plastic parts are painted by someone else, and ONLY the metal is painted by Porsche because they do not have the means of painting the plastic pieces. It really isn't a large factory and they said that it isn't worth adding all of the extra parts that it would take to be completely self contained like...
They used to use a large warehouse system. They now use a system called parts-on-demand. They start to build the engine of a car and they scan a barcode which has all of the information about the car in it and that will place an order to the suppliers to order the parts to be used on the car which will be delivered in, at the most, 4 hours. I walked around the area a bit and saw a place that was stacked from floor to ceiling with Big Reds and the other brakes. It was beautiful.
When in Munich, i also went by the BMW factory. I'm not sure what cars that they still build there as they wouldn't let us in. We decided to go to the museum instead. Bad choice. That part of munich is next to the old olympic stadium and it is super creepy. It was really foggy and the building looked very scary. I felt like I was in a bad old british movie about to be killed. Not a good feeling. The inside of the museum was even worse. It had some really nice old cars and even their first car. There were some race cars and things like that too. The way the museum works is that it looks like a coffee cup from the outside and you wind your way up the inside like a screw and the displays are along the outside of the walkway. There are things to listen to about standardization of parts and stuff. The closer you get to the top, the worse it gets. It REALLY reminded me of the epcot center at disney. They started talking about recycling water and stuff... There are some pics along the bottom of the museum about the history of the models along the years and it also shows what people looked like in that time. For the early 70's it showed pictures of people smoking grass and sniffing glue... Even in a tour pamphlet for munich, it said "If you have visited ALL of the 50 some odd museums in munich, and you really, really like cars and dream about them and how they work then you MIGHT want to visit the BMW museum." I rest my case.
They used to use a large warehouse system. They now use a system called parts-on-demand. They start to build the engine of a car and they scan a barcode which has all of the information about the car in it and that will place an order to the suppliers to order the parts to be used on the car which will be delivered in, at the most, 4 hours. I walked around the area a bit and saw a place that was stacked from floor to ceiling with Big Reds and the other brakes. It was beautiful.
When in Munich, i also went by the BMW factory. I'm not sure what cars that they still build there as they wouldn't let us in. We decided to go to the museum instead. Bad choice. That part of munich is next to the old olympic stadium and it is super creepy. It was really foggy and the building looked very scary. I felt like I was in a bad old british movie about to be killed. Not a good feeling. The inside of the museum was even worse. It had some really nice old cars and even their first car. There were some race cars and things like that too. The way the museum works is that it looks like a coffee cup from the outside and you wind your way up the inside like a screw and the displays are along the outside of the walkway. There are things to listen to about standardization of parts and stuff. The closer you get to the top, the worse it gets. It REALLY reminded me of the epcot center at disney. They started talking about recycling water and stuff... There are some pics along the bottom of the museum about the history of the models along the years and it also shows what people looked like in that time. For the early 70's it showed pictures of people smoking grass and sniffing glue... Even in a tour pamphlet for munich, it said "If you have visited ALL of the 50 some odd museums in munich, and you really, really like cars and dream about them and how they work then you MIGHT want to visit the BMW museum." I rest my case.
