On Wednesday 18th. April the Thames Valley Centre visited The Mini Plant at Oxford.
On an unusually dry and sunny day, 23 members in 12 cars gathered in the car park at the Mini Plant. I had secured tickets for tours at 9:30 and 9:50. There is a small museum area in the visitors centre.
After locking away our mobile phones, donning hi-vis tabards and safety glasses we watched the obligatory H&S video before starting our tour in the ‘body-in-white’ plant. This section is predominantly occupied by robots, only a few humans are employed feeding the smaller components into the tooling and filling the racks with panels. This was quite a contrast to the JCB factory, it was very quiet and clean, all the welding was either spot welding of the panels or welding studs in position. There weren’t even many sparks. It is mesmerising to watch the precision handling of the components by the robots. The spot-welding units even return to a service station for the electrodes to be re-profiled periodically.
All the pressed panels are produced in Swindon, I was impressed with the total lack of any rust on them, even on the tooling marks and in the punched holes. I can only assume they are zinc sprayed? Unfortunately, our 9:50 guide admitted he was new to the role and usually conducts tours of the Oxford libraries, he wasn’t very helpful fielding technical questions. I think the other guides were all ex-employees, the guy driving the bus had built Montego’s. I confess I got a little weary of his repeated fascination with the fact that the cars were all built to order to customer spec., in the end I had to point out this didn’t impress Morgan owners.
Apparently, the plant is currently on reduced shifts and was only making 3-door Minis (they are all Coopers now!) while production of the all-electric models is brought back from China. By 2030 they aim to only make EV’s, at a rate of 1,000/day. This is good news for the UK but I do wonder who will buy them all? It also illustrates how our politicians changing the rules on 100% EV manufacture to 2035 came too late for manufacturing planning on this scale.
We then went to the main assembly line which had a much higher human presence. The bodies had all been painted by now, we saw a video of the paint process, it is fully automated, only minor defects requiring human intervention. When I last went to The British Motor Museum, I saw an archive film about production of the original Mini, the place was filthy with litter on the floor and bare steel panels being thrown together. What a contrast.
After our tour we got permission to park the cars outside the visitor centre and took a group photo.
Most of us (19) then drove to The Seven Stars at Marsh Baldon for lunch. I’d previously scoped out this community owned pub with a very amenable landlord and they didn’t let us down.
This visit proved very popular, I actually couldn’t obtain enough tickets for those that wanted to come. I’d certainly recommend the tour, it will appeal to all interests.
PS: It rained the next day!
Chris Beck