Back in 2003 I toured the MINI factory in Oxford, England during a trip there; more recently Gabe Bridger visited and wrote about it on Motoringfile.
Today I received a write-up from Pat, who just took a trip over there – always interesting to read another perspective:
My arrangements to visit the MINI factory were made with Pedro from the BMW Group about three weeks before the visit. He sent a detailed packet of information via e-mail to help me prepare. After arriving at Heathrow Airport from Frankfurt, Germany, I took the Oxford Bus Lines from Heathrow. It’s about a 70-minute ride. Once in Oxford, I took the #10 bus from City Center to Cowley …
We take a short drive to Building 30 “Body in White” … we see pairs of robots working in unison to weld the middle section of the car together … the joined pieces have a small transducer mounted to the location where the pedals will be placed later. This transducer will tell the robots what model is to be built as the car moves through the shop …
… two MINIs hanging from the ceiling: one is a Cooper S while the other is a Convertible. From underneath, it’s easy to see the extra bracing, called a V-brace, which the Convertible has to stiffen its frame …
… they had already produced 179 cars for the day according to the large red digital sign in the Assembly building. As we left, they were approaching 212. Our guide said it was likely they’d make 340 or so by day’s end …
There were no MINIs in some remote parking lot just waiting around for shipment. Every day, each car is shipped to its final destination …
You can read Pats full write-up in pdf format (download here)
M&I / GBMINI 