Ingolstadt

By far the highlight of the trip so far - don’t tell Hannah- was the Audi Factory visit. Firstly we started by going to the museum which charted the history of Audi from inception, through the world wars and finally into the design of their modern day cars (some of which are better than others).

The museum had a towering 3 storey car carrousel that slowly turned to allow you to view various cars from the different levels.

Our next stop was a guided factory tour, no phones allowed for this! The tour took us through every step of the process, from the cutting of the body work with large presses- completely run by robots, to the building of the car frame and chassis, the painting and then the marriage, when the car frame and chassis are brought together.

We were surprised to know that all the cars the factory makes are for orders that have already been placed, meaning when the car is created at the start of the process it has a small back box inside, which has all of the information and options that has been chosen from colour, to seats, to steering wheel choice, alloys, key colour and sun roof etc etc. Apparently it is common for people to visit the factory on the day they pick up their cars to watch their car be made and then driven off the production line.

Towards the end of the building process humans become involved, working on a production line that barely stops we saw the cars come down the production line with humans working with robots, before they are lifted above our heads to fly to back of the workshop and then come back down to go down the next production line.

The funny part of the process was when a person needs help on the production line they full a blue cord, which triggers a small jingle to be played! The jungle was the pink panther theme tune.

The whole process from start to finish takes 24 hours, and at the end the cars are driven off the production line. For us though we saw the whole process in 1hr 30.En savoir plus