Factory visit october 20 and Weissach testdrive

K-Jetronic · 11:30 AM

Hi,

Since I always enjoy reading about these trips I thought it would be nice to write something for you regarding my visit last weekend to the Porsche factory in Zuffenhausen.

Since our Dutch Porsche club (NPC, Nederlandse Porsche Club) celibrated it's 25th anniversary, the club received an invitation from the factory to come over for a special factory tour, this would include a few laps on Weissach. A draw took place and I was one of the lucky ones (really lucky).

The Programme,

Friday, October 20th

8:50 am Bus leaves hotel

9:15 am Welcome at the Porsche museum Visit of Porsche production facilities

12:00 noon Lunch at Porsche Casino Zuffenhausen

1:20 pm Bus leaves for R&D Centre Weissach Test Drive (as passenger) various Porsche models on the test track

3:15 pm Souvenir shopping at new Porsche Design Driver's Selection boutique in Weissach

3:45 pm Bus leaves for visit to Porsche restoration workshop in Zuffenhausen

5:00 pm Bus returns to the hotel

7:30 pm Porsche AG invites you for dinner

K-Jetronic · 11:31 AM

...actually the trip started on thursday for me, after having checked the oil level and tire pressure for several times, before leaving, I finally drove off to pick up one of my lucky (very lucky) friends, Michael. We were to meet with two other 911's for our trip to Zuffenhausen, my car a 911sc 1977, a 930 1986 and a 993 cabriolet 1996. To give you an idea total distance driven was 1520 kilometers, including a detour (why not) to the Ring but more of that later.

Your host for today enroute on the autobahn.

We encountered some very heavy rain in Germany but allthough I had never driven my car in the rain those tiny wipers were fine actually.

K-Jetronic · 11:32 AM

...after a few hours the roads cleared up and we were finally able to try our cars for what they were designed for, cruising at 220 km/h for a while was no problem at all (....I love German highways)

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 07:02 AM

...formation drive......

...finally arrived at the Hotel Krone in Gerlingen (Stuttgart about 15 minutes from the factory in Zuffenhausen), departed my town near Amsterdam in The Netherlands at 8.45am arrival at 17.00pm.

...parking below the Hotel was excellent....

....and ofcourse a well deserved Stuttgarter Hofbrau Herren Pils, the crew, Chris, Michael, Jan, my ugly head (Gerko) and Gerard not on the photo.

K-Jetronic · 11:34 AM

..the following morning we departed for the Porsche museum it was a short drive, about 15 minutes. What really surprised me was that the factory is surrounded by a lot of houses. After passing the building site for the new museum and passing the beautifull dealership of Porsche Stuttgart we arrived at the museum. The museum is at the factory entrance at Zuffenhausen and is also the entrance for the people who take delivery of their car at the factory. Unfortunately but logically really, we had to leave our camera's in a safe at the museum entrance. I did take a lot of pics in the museum and will post them all there after I'll get back to you with somemore details of the factory visit itsself.. oh almost forgot when we arrived at the factory we saw two GT3 RS's parked at the otherside of the fence.

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 07:18 AM

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 07:26 AM

Gunter · Gunter's Garage

Gerko:
Pretty exciting! Nice pix.
I notice you don't have a rear spoiler.
At 200+ km, how did it feel? A little mushy?
The 911 tends to get light in the rear at those speeds.

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 07:56 AM

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 08:03 AM

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 08:06 AM

Hi Gunter,

...actually it felt fine at high speeds, I have driven it also at highspeeds with my carrera tail but haven't really noticed any difference.

K-Jetronic · 11:38 AM

.....anyway (by the way excuse me for my Denglish, Dutch/English) when we finished in the museum we were divided into small groups by our host Herr Manner (for your info a 997 carrera driver). We teamed up with a very nice and knowledgeable gentleman. Mr. Jeff Salut (for your info a 944 S2 driver) from Western Canada who had been with the factory for 37+ years and was now retired.

We then entered the factory ground from the museum, we saw a brick house which was the old Reuter factory surrounded by metal coloured assembly halls. Cars (997) were running every were for test drives, it turns out test drives are now performed at the factory iso on open road so test drivers can concentrate on test driving iso traffic.

We then first went to the final assembly line, this is an unlogical sequence but since there were other groups as well we had to start somewhere down the line.

We saw the mating of chassis and engine/gearbox ,at Zuffenhausen only the 997's are produced. 997/convertible/Turbo/Gt3 all come from the same assembly line.

Big parts like engines, suspension etc. are not kept in stock but are delivered on time at the car in correct sequence. We noticed gearboxes are made by Mercedes-Benz and in Japan.

They only built ordered cars.

Some facts:

Every Porsche engine is built in Zuffenhausen and then shipped to either Leipzig or Finland, as they say every Porsches heart is still built in Zuffenhausen.

Workers work in two shifts of 8 hours, every hour one 5 minute break.

No work in the weekend due to the noise for the neighbours, only maintenance.

Sheet metal is not pressed in Zuffenhausen but pressed somewhere else (a big car manufacturer, but remains undisclosed) due to the large presses needed.

All sheetmetal is "hot" dipped galvanized steel.

The cars when coming from the paintshop, come on the assembly line backwards they are turned 180 degrees so they face the correct frontfacing direction, turns out this increases the built quality.

Factory outputspeed 150 cars per day, actual 90 due to breaks etc.

All Boxters/Caymans are now built in Finland due to the high quality labour over there and when 997 production decreases in Zuffenhausen they can shift Boxter/Cayman production back to Zuffenhausen, this way they don't have to fire there employees as they are considered one of the biggest assets of the company (you don't hear that much anymore!).

During lunch workers are allowed to drink a Stuttgarter beer, so be sure you get a car built in the morning.

K-Jetronic · 11:39 AM

...anyway from final assembly we went to interiors and the leather department, it is nice to know that your fine interior leather is being assembled by a pretty good looking blond bavarian girl!!!

Thereafter we went to the engines unfortunately we had little time left so we saw assembly and understood that every engine is built by one person. Engines everywhere and then I spotted a strange looking 997 turbo engine with a different exhaust and a letter taped to it with handwritten GT2!!!!

We then went to the "Casino" the Porsche employee restaurant and were served an excellent lunch at a seperate table in between the employees, ofcourse we tried there beer/pils.

Then it was off to Weissach.

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 08:50 AM

.....Weissach...a 45 minute drive from Zuffenhausen. When leaving Zuffenhause you pass the Bosch building and a few minutes later you enter nice quiet roads leading to Weissach. The skies cleared, the sun came out, nice bavarian hillside...and there it was.

After having signed a letter, didn't even read it so it might be that Porsche AG will be stopping by soon to pick up my first born, we were anxious to go through the gate. Then we entered the Weissach circuit. There were lined up in the sun three red Porsches, a 997 turbo, 997 carrera S and a 997 Carrera S convertible tiptronic. (all carbon barkes)

I got to drive along as a passenger first in the 997 turbo. Woww, I am a pilot my self and have enjoyed some extreme acceleration but this was amazing, the first time ever in my life I felt light headed due to the extreme acceleration at the last corner we were doing 250 km/h and decelaration was perhaps even more inpressive my cheeks were almost coming off my face.

Whilst waiting for my second lap a few black 997, beautifull engine sound, were making there laps. GT3 wing + turbo fender 997 style inlets + GT2 engine spotted at the factory makes I believe the GT2? I asked the drivers they just started smilling and said they didn't see anything.....

Then I took a ride as a passenger in the 997 convertible and this was very nice as well, ofcourse completely different from the turbo but also very nice especiallt the sound of the engine. Difference in topspeed at the end of the straight before the last turn was 200km/h vs 250 km/h for the turbo.

K-Jetronic · 10:44 AM

...then unfortunately we had to leave, when driving from the circuit we spotted a couple of new cayenne's with stickers on the front and back. The stickers implied rearlights as seen on the Volvo XC90 but it looked actually like they won't stretch all the way up. When passing the fuel station on the facility we spotted, what looked like a black camouflaged Panamera and a Mercedes mule entered the circuit.

Then off to the shop at Weissach after some shopping we were then brought back to Zuffenhausen for a visit to Werk 1.

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 09:16 AM

.....Werk 1, fascilitates the Classic deparment. You can bring your old Porsche there for restauration or maintenance. Hour rates are 80 euro, which I don't think are too bad. To get an impression, they were doing maintenance on 4, yes four 959's of wich one was owned (I looked at the invoice

) by Herr Wolfgang Porsche, there was a white 993 GT2(from Kuwait), a white RSR, couple off S's and they were restoring an orange coloured stretched (I would say for about a foot/30 cm) 911s, which was a prototype for a real 4 seat car. It was being restored for the new museum.

On a side note I learned that my SC might be a prototype since it was built in july 1977 as no. 147 and Porsche would have built approx. 150 prototype SC's in 1977. Don't know if this information makes me happy but it certainly explains why I have a handthrottle assembly in my car.

Then we were off to the hotel and were offered a nice dinner by Porsche AG and the evening was spend with lots of Pils and some spirited conversation.

I almost forgot some funny stories told by Mr. Salut,

a customer (concours guy) once called to complain about some damage to the cars bolds on the floorpan. The complaint was there was some red markings on there and he would like to know how to remove these. After they explained this was to check torque the guy went silent.....after some time he comes back and says he wanted to order some of that red paint.

In the old days when the FIA came checking all 917's, they had to be checked in working order. So all cars had to be started, after having started 5 cars (inside by the way) they stopped starting more cars because off the noise off all these engines (must have been a glorious sound by the way). It then was all found OK by the inspectors, turns out all the other cars were not even finished....

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 09:27 AM

...next day, since I was in Germany anyway we decided on the way back to pay a visit to the Nurburgring/Nordschleife AKA Die Grune Hole.

We left early in the morning for a nice drive of about 3 and a half hours to the ring.

This is the road to Adenau to the ring,

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 09:37 AM

we decided to do two runs and it was unbelievable look at the pics.

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 09:39 AM

and ofcourse the mandatory "Jack Olsen" Pic,

K-Jetronic · 10-22-2006, 09:43 AM

...and my car? ....behaved flawlessly, it's true what they say "drive it like you stole it". Didn't need to add any oil at all, looks like it runs better! It is still dirty in the garage waiting for a wash and an oil change.....

...how do I feel....remember this......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRbzJ0L1Zn8