Red Merle wrote:

Why should they be built any differently?

Those staff in Slovakia will be doing a very similar job, assembling very similar parts to exactly the same design and specification, on a very similar production line as those recently redundant staff in Solihull.

Just pausing to think of another chunk of wealth generating manufacturing lifted and shifted abroad

DG wrote:

So all the FFRR, Velars & RRS go through the same paint shop without issue then

DG wrote:

No the incentive is to build motors of a much higher retail value ..of which the remains a demand

I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the number of people who lost their jobs at Solihull

J77 wrote:

Red Merle wrote:

Why should they be built any differently?

Those staff in Slovakia will be doing a very similar job, assembling very similar parts to exactly the same design and specification, on a very similar production line as those recently redundant staff in Solihull.

Just pausing to think of another chunk of wealth generating manufacturing lifted and shifted abroad

For a “£1bn state of the art facility” I would expect things to be screwed together better. And LR themselves say it has a new paint shop for a “high quality finish” so again I’d expect it to be better than some of the shoddy paint jobs I’ve seen from Solihull.

Have you toured many car & motorcycle factories? I’ve been through Rover at Cowley in the mid 80’s, then MINI at the same plant two decades later (many, many times), Land Rover at both Halewood and Solihull (twice, or thrice, I’m not sure!), Morgan (which was a bit different!), along with several visits to Triumph at Hinckley (Plant 1 and 2).

What is surprising is:

1. The level of highly consistent automation.

2. How manual tasks are broken down into simple procedures that are difficult to do any better, or worse.

3. How strictly controlled what the workers do is and hard some of these people have to work.

4. How little assembly and build work is done in the factory itself, with the quality of the finished vehicle utterly dependent on the quality of the sub assemblies supplied to the manufacturer. For instance, the entire dashboard will come in as one complete assembly, with the line worker lifting it with semi automated mechanical handling equipment, joining it to the existing working loom by joining a small number of multi plugs and then bolting the whole assembly in place, using a pre-torque set air tool on a surprisingly small number of bolts. If there is anything wrong with the dash, the line worker has next to no influence over it. It will still be down to the quality of the original design and the sub contractor.

If there is likely to be a change in Slovakia, it’ll be from inexperienced and unproven staff, learning on the job, who will be getting their practice in on the first few months’ production There’s something new for the worriers to worry about

It is surprising how many LR enthusiasts aren’t that bothered whether the factories in the UK are wound down and the production is shipped out. Perhaps there’ll be a big psychological benefit in knowing that it’s not assembled in some grubby car plant where BL used to be and is instead assembled by magic pixies, with mythical powers, working in clinically clean factories overseas, where mistakes are never made and the quality is always flawless Those magic pixies that aren’t already busy, building completely flawless cars in Germany that is

Pelyma wrote:

Even Rolls Royce have issues, the difference is they try not to let them out the factory (not always successfully) The perfect manufacturing process doesn't exist, but its the intention of the company to make the QC the best it can possibly be and that lays at both LRs feet and the dealers feet. Some seem to be able to do it, mainly those dealers that DG and Red Merle use and the rest have varying degrees of struggling

My dealer isn’t perfect. I’ve yet to meet one that is. But it does help to have a realistic expectation of what is and isn’t sensible to expect and treat the dealer with a degree of respect. On that basis, I usually get the very best out of the service staff and service manager and in return they always seem to be very helpful