Misc notes...
And some other news. I spent 2 hours today at the Porsche plant and had a factory tour. I did this about 10 years
ago and it was fantastic. Some cool things I saw and learned:
-They make the 997, Boxsters and current 997 cup cars on the same assembly line.
-I could see 3 Cup cars at different places in the assembly line. They do pull the cups off the line after they install most of the interior to do some "special" things. It then goes back on the line for suspension and the "marriage" of the engine.
-Saw them building all kinds of engines. Could not watch them build the Carrera GT engine. Its off limits.
I did see a display of a GT engine. It looked 1/2 the mass of a Cayenne Turbo engine sitting right next to it.
-Lost of sub contractors delivering parts all day. The sub that builds the axel, including the brakes and shocks is just next door. The factory holds 30 minutes of inventory. Yup, just 30 minutes.
-I saw them building a signal orange 997S4 with PCCB, and Turbo flairs. Totally custom. All the workers on the floor were looking at the car.
-The sub that delivers the carpets brings them, hanging in a big box like thingy. The cool part is the carpets are aligned by color, exactly like the cars are on the assembly line. They know what cars are going to be on the assembly line 7 days in advance.
-It takes 3.5 hours or something like that to assembly a 997 or Boxster engine.
-The leather from the dash boards and the seats comes from the same cow... Oh.. and if you have a bunch of cows, bring them to Stuttgart. They will arrange for those cows to snuggle up to your very own ***...
-Only 50% of the cars are roadtested today.
-All the cup cars are shipped to Wissach (sp) for final prep b-4 going to the team.
-They say the build the cups only for about 4 months of the year.
-All the guys painting the cars used to sign their names behind the right rear tail light. Go pull yours off and see if it is signed. They don't do this anymore because some of the young workers don't like it.
-The guys that build the cup car engines used to also sign them. They don't anymore. The teams used to look for the signatures, run the engines on dyno and see what guy build the most powerful engines. They would call the factory and say they only wanted engines from that guy.
-Two German (Stuttgart area.) laws. The workers must get a 5 minute break every 1 hour they work. Porsche negotiated 10 minutes every two ours. Also, the law states that all the engines must be within +/-4% of the published
HP rating. Porsche guarantees all engines to at least the stated number up to 4+ over.
-There are some hot chicks working on the assembly line.
-There are only about 5 guys in the entire factory who can properly fit the doors. They have to make specific adjustments so the doors make that classic thud we have all come to love.
-The painted bodies move on an assembly line about 2 meters above your head. I could look up and see a street 997 and a 997 Cup. It was really hard to see any differences. I could not even see the assemblies
for the air jacks.
-It takes about 20 years to be a test driver. Even then you only get to test drive for 4 weeks then you rotate back to your other job.
-When they build a cabriolet, and order a hard top, it gets two "wind" tests. A guy sits in the car (the guy with the biggest ears) and listens for wind noise as they hit the car with 80 mph winds. (They do the same with rain to see if it leaks.), The car gets pulled an the hard top is installed, and its done all over again.
-Yellow stitching on black leather looks really cool.
-I like the clock on the 997 dash board.

 

Sounds like you had quite a tour! Thanks for the write up.

Brian

 

I love posts like this, thank you for sharing.
Did you say they assemble the V-10 CGT motor in Stuttgart
and not Liepzig? (I saw the CGT assembley tour).
Did you order a car or are you a regular Porsche nut who just set
up a factory tour (I plan on doing this in next 6 months)
thanks,
Marty

 

So...
There are hot chicks building 997 GT3 Cup Cars in the beer capital of the World... wow, nevermind Hawaii, I want to go there.

 

I also had a tour recently and was told that the Carrera GT engines are assembled in Stuttgart a short distance from the Zuffenhausen factory buildings cluster. I was unhappy when I heard the 50% only test drive change. I told the guide that I thought that was an important quality control phase. The guide said they use different 'other' tests and were trying to avoid environmental issues caused by test drives.

 

When I did the tour about 4 years ago only about 50% of the new cars were driven in the streets and/busy autobaun (so no real excessive speeds). So not sure the 50% test drives for 997's is much different than the 996's.

 

The workers can STILL drink beer on the line which is why I want to work at Porsche.

 

Thanks very cool write up...did you manage to see any 997GT3's while you were there?

 

Thanks for the comments on your tour.

-There are some hot chicks working on the assembly line.

And... what were they doing???

Get your minds out of the gutter! Were they working on the motors?

 

I toured the factory in autumn 2003. My understanding at the time was EVERY Porsche was test driven.

That was an interesting part of being there...all day long, brand new Porsches were zipping in and out of the grounds on their test drives. The guide emphasized that due to the mandatory test drives, no Porsche could ever be sold with zero miles. This change in policy is thus surprising to me.

 

Austin,

I'm ready to leave when ever you are!