namasgt

Where any of the 928 models hand built/hand assembled or where they all made and put together on an assembly line?
I ask because remember reading some where on rennlist that the early models where hand assembled until the late 80s before they had a proper assembly line?

Every time I see a for sale add for the E28 M5 or E34 M5, they always say the last of the hand built M5 or at least for the E34 chassis being the last one. They always seem to rave about it in the BMW crowd.

Hand built and hand assembled would be two different things I guess. To me hand built would mean everything down to the chassis was made and put together by hand like a Koenigsegg for example. Which in the case of the early M5 cars cant be true since the basic chassis and body was the same as the regular 5 series.

Vilhuer

First ten or eleven pre series cars were made stationary on one spot before production line was ready. They were sort of trial pieces and rehearsal cases for production line work. After that all except few full aluminum bodies were probably done at production line but there were lots of hand assembly in it. Much more than nowdays.

James Bailey

They were built on an assembly line and lots of different hands touched them as they moved along the line. It was designed to build 5,000 or so per year so something like 20 cars per day.

to some might just mean no robots ....but power tools were very much a part of the assembly process. No one person or even small group could look at a 928 and say "I built that"...

namasgt

In the case of the E34 M5 I was reading that each car was either being built by one single person or a group of people. Was wondering if this could have also been a similar case for the 928 given how many where made each year fro some models.

hacker-pschorr

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Koenigsegg vs BMW comparison.

IMO it's the BMW crowed trying to justify whey their aging sedan is somehow superior to a modern Bimmer.

Would a 100% hand build BMW actually be better? If so, why? Certain tasks like engine building can benefit from a human element putting all the pieces together. Does that apply to every other part?

Last year I was talking to the head of some Aston Martin club at a concours. He was bragging that if you closely measured all the Aston's they brought, no two would match 100% since each body is hand built by one person per car.
I asked myself: "Is this really a good thing???"

Imagine if 928's were built this way and you were trying to replace a bumper or a fender.......

I think the whole idea is overrated unless we are talking about a super exotic like a Koenigsegg or Pagani.

Even with those two cars, are all the billet aluminum and titanium pieces "hand built"? Nope, they are done via CNC, not some guy sitting in a corner carving out pieces by hand.

Vilhuer

Early Ferraris are good example of hand building and what it means to parts tolerances. There is story about one UK owner going to Italy in seventies or early eighties with his fifties Ferrari. He complained to repair shop owner who had been involved in making those hand beaten alu bodies that fenders on each side of the car are about inch different shape and size. Answer was simple, Luigi did left side and Pietro did right one. Go to left side and look at it, itsn't it pretty. Now go to right side, isn't it also very pretty. You can never see both sides at same time. So who cares if they have different measurements. Same kind of mentality was around up to early seventies until V6 and V8 models came along. Try to fit windshield to sixties Ferrari. It has extra inch of material on purpose which is trimmed away until it fits. Time it takes to put in is exponentially larger than in production line made 928.

Imo000

Hand built was mostly for car manufacturers that couldn't afford or justify assembly lines. With proper QC, the same level of acuracy can be reached in an assembly line but sometimes hand built can justify the inflated price too.

Justin N

Take a look at some of the videos online of various high marque manufacturers. All have various bits that are still hand built. As some processes have become automated manufacturers have pushed people into the areas that require a high level of finish-body, paint, engine, leather etc. I watched the video of the ferrari FF body being built. A lot of alloy pieces are hand welded, ground and than the whole body is hand sanded and checked before going to paint.

Dave928S

Here are a few pics from a book I have, which shows assembly around 1982, which is showing about the only aids are component and body transport jigs, and special tools ... about as handbuilt as you can get in any factory ... seems to me to be a reasonable mix of automation to ensure consistency and adherence to reasonable tolerances, and yet with individual craftsmanship input in areas like leather, and to allow single car individuality of options.

If you do a search you should find a thread which has a lot of very early factory shots, at around the start of production.

SMTCapeCod

also, a few concept cars.

AMGs often wave the hand-built flag as well, at least for the powerplants on the higher-production cars.

The Fixer

The pictures of production in 1982 that Dave928S provides above are very much how automobiles like Rolls Royce, Bentley and Lotus are built today.

Ferdinand and Son Ferry Porsche went to Dearborn to study Ford's assembly line before they began building Porsches. They brought a model A home with them i believe.

Interesting thread.

Imo000

Thos pictures are not of hand built but hand assembled. There is a huge difference. Hand built is when a pice of metal is hand pounded into a fender and not stamped by a press. This makes every part unique and a real PITA when it comes to replacing it.

depami

Ever wonder why there was a cigarette butt in your crankcase?

Or maybe this explains rod bearing failure!

drnick

More and more of them are being hand re-built

dr bob

British and Italian sports cars up until at least the 1970's were often "hand-built". Ferrari used "gas brazed" mild steel tubing frame structures that almost guaranteed that no two cars were the same. I bought a new bonnet for my '67 E type, after seeing how warped/bent the original was. It seemed like it had been 'sprung' in a collision. The new one? Worse than the original. My deTomaso Mungusta had a gas-brazed mild steel tubing frame that seemed to have been finished after the engine was installed. Spray-painted from cans it seemed, lots of rust very common where paint blistered off from engine heat. Other places rusted from the inside out, with no protection at all inside the tubing. 302 Ford V8, with exhaust so tight that tubes were collapsed from the factory to get things to fit without rubbing. Body panels fit OK, but it was obvious a lot of hand fitting and adjustment was part of the original build process. Left side was not the same as the right side. The only consistency was the Fiat-sourced electrics, distant married second cousins to the Lucas bits on the Jaguar. All had electrical systems that seemed primitive at the time, compared to American car production stuff. Hand-built looms, friction tape, flying splices in the middle of sections, poor standard color coding. Ever wonder why/how a DIN standard for wiring color was thunked up? It was some poor auto engineer, stranded on a roadside someplace in the rain in a British, Italian, or (gasp!) French car from the sixties and seventies.

Look at build quality on some luxo-exotics of the same period as the 928, and get a sense for how wonderful the 928 is. Roll the hood open on a Countach, and see what looks a lot like boneyard 'engineering' of various bits thrown together in haste. Anybody remember that TV show where two teams were tasked with building a running something from bits they could scrounge in a junkyard? Lambo production was the prototype/pilot for that show.


Hand-built cars better? Only if you are very very lucky.