Geek out! The world’s longest production lines

If you’re interested in cars you’re probably equally fascinated by the factories that make them. And rightly so, because it’s a compelling thing to watch the head-melting logistics of putting together hugely complicated machines in a consistent and repeatable way.

I’ve stood in the Toyota plant in Derbyshire watching the last pair of front seats being lifted from the rack to be installed in a Corolla and been halfway through saying, ‘Uh oh, someone’s really fuc…’ when a new rack of seats was delivered at precisely the moment the next car shuffled into the seat fitting station. Until then, I hadn’t realised how just-in-time those just-in-time parts deliveries could be.

I’ve watched the men and women of Longbridge lifting the entire front and rear suspension assemblies up into the shells of Rovers and MGs in a process known as the ‘simultaneous stuff-up’, a piece of smoothly moving Brummie ballet that once wowed Honda, which at the time could only do the front and rear mating processes as separate operations.