Hand Built Car?

[missingsid]

So as I get older I start to realise that like my parents before me I am no longer understanding current language or concepts.

For instance (and not passing judgement or comment just demonstrating change), There was Straight and Gay, then there was LBG, LBGT now but possibly out of date allready, LBGTIQCAPGNGFNBA.

 

But this is the one that really supprised me today.

I was watching a bit of SUV Supercar Build, not something I am interested at all but it was about the current G-Wagon (see there is 4x4 relevance) so I caught a bit until.

The G-Wagon is hand built,

So to me a hand built car is you take a flat sheet of ali and craftsmen run it through an English Wheel and assemble the body from nothing. Think Aston Martin in the 50's and Morgan still. Or Carbon Fibre parts hand formed and compiled to make a monocoque.

Not so according to TV and Mercedes, the hand built G-Wagon means that the car is built by people on a factory assembly line as normal except there are no robots!

The parts are still foundary pressed, they are still jig located and they are still spot welded and MIG welded but by humans (shock horror awe) so hand built now means that it is built on an 1980's production line (they are known for producing quality products)! Oh and the spot welders and MIG welders are called Artisans now and are difficult to find?

Yes I have been called a grumpy old man for a few years now.

 

[Bigj66]

1 hour ago, missingsid said:

So as I get older I start to realise that like my parents before me I am no longer understanding current language or concepts.

For instance (and not passing judgement or comment just demonstrating change), There was Straight and Gay, then there was LBG, LBGT now but possibly out of date allready, LBGTIQCAPGNGFNBA.

 

But this is the one that really supprised me today.

I was watching a bit of SUV Supercar Build, not something I am interested at all but it was about the current G-Wagon (see there is 4x4 relevance) so I caught a bit until.

The G-Wagon is hand built,

So to me a hand built car is you take a flat sheet of ali and craftsmen run it through an English Wheel and assemble the body from nothing. Think Aston Martin in the 50's and Morgan still. Or Carbon Fibre parts hand formed and compiled to make a monocoque.

Not so according to TV and Mercedes, the hand built G-Wagon means that the car is built by people on a factory assembly line as normal except there are no robots!

The parts are still foundary pressed, they are still jig located and they are still spot welded and MIG welded but by humans (shock horror awe) so hand built now means that it is built on an 1980's production line (they are known for producing quality products)! Oh and the spot welders and MIG welders are called Artisans now and are difficult to find?

Yes I have been called a grumpy old man for a few years now.

 

Just more marketing BS for us to contend with 😠

[De Ranged]

Lol another play on words, similar to the "made in (insert country)" scam...... so the parts are made in China or India and then the item has its final assembly in the country they want to claim it is from 

[miketomcat]

The only true hand built cars are kit cars and morgan maybe one or two others.

Mike

[ballcock]

The Defender was the same, hand built on a production line with pre-made parts. Does Mercedese do it better? Morgams and most kit cars use pre-formed panels eithr pressed or moulded.

[missingsid]

Didn't think Morgans were TBH last time I saw a Morgan on TV (a week ago) it was still on an English Wheel?

[Snagger]

It’s an expensive way to build cars, and lets be honest - it is the real reason why LR killed the Defender; safety standards and emissions are not responsible and claiming so is a huge lie.  But robots have taken jobs, and while that continues to spread throughout industries, it’ll make products cheaper (and corporate bosses’ renumeration bigger), but will increase tax burdens on the remaining working part of the population as they pay the benefits of those forced out of work.

So the economic question boils down to a simple choice: do you want to pay more for goods and have higher employment, social cohesion, choice and lower taxes, or do you want cheap goods, high unemployment, social break down and high taxation leaving you even poorer?  

The same applies to buying foreign good, especially from those nations which don’t trade in a fair and proportionate manner, using state subsidy to undercut other nations and destroy their manufacturing industries and ultimately their economies.  The Chinese model, in other words.

[Bowie69]

If you want a peak at what a non-hand built car factory is like, have a look at Richard hammond's 'Big' episode 1, which shows you round the facility in Wolfsburg.

[monkie]

I agree with the above but the thing is price is huge factor for us all. If you want something and there are two items on the shelf, one a fraction of the price than the other but do more or less the same thing....  I will put my hand up and admit I often buy on price unless the quality is miles different. 

If it weren't for robotic production lines the I think most people wouldn't be able to afford a decent car. Its up to you to decide if that's a good or bad thing. 

Also robots can do dangerous work and reduce the amount of industrial accidents. Pros and cons to everything. 

[Bowie69]

Plus, robots don't make mistakes.... Will work 24h a day without 'comfort breaks' and won't be able join the union to complain 😛

 

Personally I see very little benefit at all to having a hand built vehicle, it is the preserve of the rich and famous for things like Rolls Royce(i.e. just for posing), and is/was only a necessity for the G-wagen and the defender.

 

[western]

This was on recently one of the free view channels ran it, definitely hand formed, panels, handmade frame & interior, no robots in Morgan's factory

 

http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160225-how-is-a-morgan-made-building-britains-classic-car-by-hand. 

[smallfry]

36 minutes ago, monkie said:

I agree with the above but the thing is price is huge factor for us all. If you want something and there are two items on the shelf, one a fraction of the price than the other but do more or less the same thing....  I will put my hand up and admit I often buy on price unless the quality is miles different. 

If it weren't for robotic production lines the I think most people wouldn't be able to afford a decent car. Its up to you to decide if that's a good or bad thing. 

Also robots can do dangerous work and reduce the amount of industrial accidents. Pros and cons to everything. 

Exactly the same thing with the coal mines which people still keep banging on about. Bag of English coal £30, or from Poland £10. Which would you like sir ?

I am/was in the furniture trade making furniture, and it always amuses me when things are described as "hand made". It conjures up a mental image of a chap in an apron and half moon glasses at a bench covered in wood shavings, using basic hand tools. While I can do it that way, machinery us used as much as possible.

I am also an apprenticed paint sprayer (mid1970s) but have done nothing professionally since 1982, mainly because its a s****y job, and nobody wants to pay.

As someone on the bottom end of the pay scale, and who is only any good at what you would call manual work, I do worry about what is going to become of people like me who are not academic, and do not get of well with tech, and only have six brain cells. How are we going to earn a living ? Not everyone can do admin or office type stuff, like all the people on TV dramas and films. Someone, somewhere, actually has to make something.

Sadly doing any sort of hands on job or craft has no perceived value when it comes to paying for it, whereas tapping a few keys in a trendy office seems to worth a fortune.

[Bowie69]

2 minutes ago, smallfry said:

As someone on the bottom end of the pay scale, and who is only any good at what you would call manual work, I do worry about what is going to become of people like me who are not academic, and do not get of well with tech, and only have six brain cells. How are we going to earn a living ? Not everyone can do admin or office type stuff, like all the people on TV dramas and films. Someone, somewhere, actually has to make something.

You've watched blade runner? It is hard to ignore that wealth inequality will continue to rise if we stay on the current path, and it is a very sad path.

[lo-fi]

It's simple: robots are better at all of it. More consistent, don't go on strike, don't take holiday and don't have awkward union reps. 

There's a break point in volume where automating all of it doesn't make sense, and that's probably the point the G Wagon falls into. Plus it gives the marketing department something to shout about. 

If you genuinely hand build something in the traditional sense, you'd better be charging a lot of money for it. Otherwise you end up with a Land Rover. 

As far as people who are only good at manual labour go and their future employment prospects: Universal Basic Income. There's won't be jobs for everyone in the future, but there's growing evidence to suggest that the majority of people - when given a livable income and time on their hands - find something to do that's of value to society and entirely justifies paying their living. AI is going to take the office jobs soon too, so don't feel its just the hands on guys who are in this boat! So long as we can free ourselves of the victorian workhouse ethos we've held onto far too long, it'll all be fine. 

[Snagger]

7 hours ago, lo-fi said:

 

As far as people who are only good at manual labour go and their future employment prospects: Universal Basic Income. There's won't be jobs for everyone in the future, but there's growing evidence to suggest that the majority of people - when given a livable income and time on their hands - find something to do that's of value to society and entirely justifies paying their living. AI is going to take the office jobs soon too, so don't feel its just the hands on guys who are in this boat! So long as we can free ourselves of the victorian workhouse ethos we've held onto far too long, it'll all be fine. 

I think you are over optimistic about human nature.  Take people’s opportunity to have jobs and you take their identity and self respect.  Then the rot sets in.  Have a look around the inner cities when large groups of benefits users are and compare them to working areas and there is a general difference in mentality.  Magnify that across the bulk of the population, with even less hope and more normalisation of deviance and it’ll be utterly dystopian.

[smallfry]

I don't want to be GIVEN a liveable income. I have never been unemployed, and TBH I don't believe in benefits either. My father always believed that you had to work for what you have and not be expected to be given anything, and I guess that has rubbed off on me.

It seems to me that a lot of those who acquire a "liveable income" by whatever dubious means, and have time on their hands, seem to go out of their way to make other peoples lives a misery, rather than doing anything beneficial for themselves or others

[Bowie69]

If you don't have to work, you won't.

UBI has been proven again and again that it just isn't workable, and wherever you may implement it, there will be another person/region/country that won't, you lose the commercial advantage you had, and you get left behind on the world stage, meaning you don't keep up with rising costs resulting in poverty.

[elbekko]

On 5/10/2020 at 10:34 AM, smallfry said:

Sadly doing any sort of hands on job or craft has no perceived value when it comes to paying for it, whereas tapping a few keys in a trendy office seems to worth a fortune.

Want to come tap my keys for me? We'll see how long you earn that fortune.

You still have to learn a trade and apply it, you're just executing it differently.

[Dave W]

There are so many grey areas in this and I guess we all have our own definition of "hand made". It depends how much of a purist you are I guess...

There's a perception form the OP that "hand made" requires body work panels to be created from scratch but what about the wires ? What about the materials for the body ? What about the instruments, switches, the gearstick and so on ?

The reality is that even in the most bespoke cars, at some point, they are not "hand made" but assembled. I'm not aware of any car manufacturers that go out and dig up their own iron ore to produce body panels. Neither do they mine copper and produce their own wire. It's not easy to draw a definitive line in the sand to determine at what point an item is "assembled" vs "made".

[FridgeFreezer]

The few robot-made bits in the last Defenders caused them problems because they were too accurate and wouldn't always fit the wonky stuff they were being bolted to

[geoffbeaumont]

3 hours ago, elbekko said:

Want to come tap my keys for me? We'll see how long you earn that fortune.

You still have to learn a trade and apply it, you're just executing it differently.

Exactly - my job, for example, is essentially computer programming. It's problem solving and creating functioning systems, usually implementing other peoples designs for user interfaces. It's sat at a computer with no physical product to see at the end of the day, but it's essentially a skilled trade. It's really no different from say a joiner, I just use different tools and materials.

[smallfry]

I didn't say anything about skills or trades, or even education or qualifications come to that. I was talking about the perceived monetary value to a paying customer.

[JeffR]

Went up to Blyth a while ago (OK a couple of years ago, but who's counting) to look at a lathe we were thinking of buying, the restoration yard specialised in E types (and Austin 7"s), I asked the young guy who ran the place where he got his panels from, he replied "we make them ourselves" the skill required to form a rear 1/4 for an E type ...... Just wow. 

Geoff I know how you feel, my main job is identifying insects, and like you folks do not always realise the skill involved, even after 30 years I'm still learning.

[Gazzar]

Identifying insects is easy. If it has more than 4 legs, it's probably an insect.

There. Easy.

[Retroanaconda]

I hear the sound of arachnologists everywhere twitching  

As for the topic, I don’t have a problem with the phrase hand built as it basically just means it’s assembled by hand. It differs slightly in my view from hand made which does imply something closer to the ‘English wheel’ scenario.