Factory Visit.

Well we did the factory visit today and first of all have to thank Danielle and Terry for their efforts.

What an experience, if your into that kind of thing of course.

Coming from a logistics (supply in old terms) background it was fascinating, organised chaos or maybe that should read fork lift ballet.

On our way to the factory, there were Evoques and Freelanders parked in every available inch of space going, it's makes you wonder if the transporters can keep up with it, and the rail carriages were being continuously being loaded up.

Whatever, to see sheet metal become body panels and then watching the robots dancing away with their panels which are turned into body shells was great.

Then you go to the final trim side with all the assembly workforce beavering away, it is brilliant.

Despite Danielle's efforts we didn't get to see our car, it no longer exists on the factory build system, so it is somewhere else either awaiting a transporter or on a transporter.

As I've said before it is not everyone's cup of tea, but we enjoyed it and that's another mystery unravelled.

There were much more LHDs in the build mix compared to RHDs, which is to be expected I suppose.

Glad you enjoyed it. You really have to see a car assembly plant in action to appreciate the mind boggling complexity of the supply chain aspects - especially when it's run on zero inventory/slotted/sequenced JIT principles. Its amazing to see and easy to comprehend why a plant can't just turn an invisible knob and 'make more cars now'.

The other thought that comes to mind is that I think we saw every colour that is currently available.

Some which stood out were Havanna, Ipanema, & Mauritius, other colours I have not seen before were, Baltic Blue, Galway Green.

The wide range of Contrast paint jobs were also bewildering.

There are going to be many unique Evoques on the road.

Pleased to hear that the Havana stood out Evo!

Glad you enjoyed your tour. It is a very interesting thing too do.

There was a Hanover Prestige being handed over to a customer when I went to get mine last Saturday & it looked very nice indeed.

Did the factory tour today at Solihull, a real eye opener, the logistics must be a real nightmare but everything was going like clockwork. One of the reasons for the visit was to try and decide on a colour for next year when I put in my order, I was thinking of either Ipanema or Nara bronze, ( having had black was thinking of something different ) the guys at the VIP centre had sourced the two colours to have a look at but even though I had nearly decided on Nara I still wasn't quite sure, so being such a helpful bunch we jumped into their hybrid sport & went round to the holding area to see as many colours as we could in the flesh. I think I have now decided on the colour which is one I never even thought about, Havana, even under cloudy skies it has something about it.

So if you are going for Havana or Nara you aren't buying an Evoque next! Havana is a lovely colour for the RRS2, Nara looks fantastic on Disco4 and FFRR, especially with a tan interior
Halewood was a good day out BUT Solihull is much more of an occassion with it's huge LRE onsite and now there is the FFRR VIP Delivery Centre too.

Your right Tim, I have decided to go for a HSE rrs2. Had arranged to initially view Ipanema and Nara in the VIP delivery centre, but after visits to the trim floor and the paint shop was undecided, so they drove me to the other side of the site to look at other colours, that's when I saw a Havana ( out of all the cars, FFRR, disco and sport only saw one Havana, so looks like it might be a rare colour for it ) passed the entrance to the "jungle track" but couldn't persuade them to take the hybrid down it

Hybrid would be OK on it! Autocar had a good attempt to drown a Hybrid FFRR in this week's magazine. They went wading in Nepal, unfortunately LR's guys directed them into a river with a softer bed than expected and the car started to dig a trench. No Big Bang and flash though, the hybrid has a special isolator that prevents damage to the battery and drive system by shutting it down. They reversed out using the Diesel engine, dried out the engine and drained a couple of ECUs that in production cars would be sealed and off they drove - Autocar reported that not a drop of water entered the car's interior even though the bonnet was underwater and the intakes were submerged

Must admit, it did seem a little strange traveling along in silence, albeit for only short periods, I also noticed when the diesel kicked back in there was a noticeable kick.