Ferrari Mailing List: Ferrari club at Rolls Royce

[Britt2Asa (Britt2Asa]

The West Midlands Group of the FOC UK headed down to Goodwood today to visit 
and tour the Rolls Royce factory. Heres how it went if you are interested. (if 
not delete now)

A friend of mine in the FOC use to work with the now managing director of RR 
Motorcars at BMC many decades ago. He was able to arrange a visit for 19 of us 
and a tour of the new factory so at 700am this morning we headed south for 
the 204 mile trip to the southern coast of England. We had a 456GT, a 550, 
Mondial 3.2, Mondial 3.2 cab, 328GTS x2, 330GTC, and a 355GTS between us plus a 
few 
non Ferraris. After a spirited cross country drive and a great lunch in a 
country pub on the outskirts of the Goodwood estate we arrived at the factory 
at 
3pm and parked all the Ferraris out front in their courtyard along with 5 new 
Rolls.

We were given a 30 minute talk by the managing director and than a two hour 
walking tour of the assembly plant covering more than one mile!

Now I haven't really had any interest in RR, I don't have one and never 
planned to buy one but seeing automobile assembly plants is a hobby of mine and 
I 
have toured Ferrari and Maserati multiple times alnog with Peugoets Ryton plant 
and the Browns Lane Jag factory before it closed. Rolls was a bit different.

The factory is half built under ground and blends in very well with the 
landscape (this part of england is very very pretty and besides Lord March 
didnt 
want to look out the windows of Goodwood house and gaze over his 24000 acre 
estate and see a factory so its low and almost totally hidden from view. The 
factory is right across from  the Goodwood motor racing circuit and only about 
a 
mile from Goodwood race course (that would be the one for horses). It opened in 
2003 and to date as built 2500 cars, all Phantoms, both normal, long wheel 
base and extended long wheel base. less than 800 cars a year are built and they 
complete 5 per day. 550 people work there and it is a very quiet and clean 
environment. There are 18 stations after paint and each station allows 85 
minutes 
to work on the car. This is of course much slower than almost any other 
assembly plant including ferrari. First we toured the paint shop which has the 
only 
4 robots at the facility, painting the car takes 5 days. Next the 18 stations 
are followed as the car is assembled; this takes another 5-6 days. lastly 7-10 
days are spent in testing and final prep so each car takes about 20 days to 
build. The amount of bespoke work is far in excess of anything I saw at 
ferrari, every car is built to order and every one is different. The 
combinations of 
leather, paint, and wood in each car was really something to see.

If you haven't seen the new Rolls in person it is a very big and imposing 
car. Not beautiful but damn it has presence. It was interesting to stand next 
to 
a car with the 6.75l engine running and you could not hear the engine at all. 
thats 450hp and 0-60 in 5.8 seconds on 2.5 tons of car! For the art and 
craftsmanship of automobile manufacturing it was even more impressive than 
Ferrari 
so if you love cars in general and ever have the chance it is worth a visit.

Lastly we did see some of the new convertibles on the assembly line. They are 
still in the process of building the 50 preproduction models (this is the one 
with the wood deck cover for the convertible top that looks like a Riva 
powerboat) that you probably saw pictures of in the car mags this summer. 
Pretty 
neat looking and the wood work is done by a firm in Italy...Apparently they 
have 
450 orders for this car already so along with the 3 sixes of Phantoms the RR 
factory is sold out for the next year or so as of today.

After the tour the factory was closing and a bunch of the workers came out 
front to look at the Ferraris and talk about cars with us so we stayed around 
another hour and took a bunch of pictures.

Very interesting and if you ever make it to Goodwood and have the time try to 
book a visit to see this factory and how they make these cars cause it is an 
education in itself and worth a visit. 

BR in the UK
1986 328GTS (LHD 89,940km) Died August 19, 2006 Shrewsbury UK
1980 400i (RHD 72,000 miles)