CNET takes a look inside luxury car manufacturer Bentley's factory, to see how it relies on handcrafting rather than robotics to create its opulent vehicles.
Source: cnet.com
This is the Bentley Mulsanne, Bentley's flagship luxury vehicle, full of all the hand-crafted wood and hand-stitched leather you'd expect on a top-end car with a price tag clocking in at over £200,000 ($335,000 or AU$600,000).
It takes 400 hours to produce just one Mulsanne from start to finish, a process that includes hand-building the W12 engine, over 5,800 spot welds in the body work -- mostly done by hand -- and 150 hours of hand-stitching the leather interior.
I managed to get inside this facility, in Crewe in northern England, to see first-hand how Bentley produces the Mulsanne, as well as the sporty Continental. Click through to see this luxury vehicle go from a bare skeleton to an opulent lounge on wheels.
The cars start out in this rather unassuming skeletal form. It's in the Body in White facility where all the welding for Bentley's cars are performed.
Over 5,800 spot welds are performed in order to securely bolt the car together.
More than 3,700 employees work in the factory, most of whom are from the local area. Many of the employees I spoke to have direct relatives who work or have worked in the Crewe factory.
More on cnet.com
No comments:
Post a Comment