Folks love saying that “they do not make them like they used to,” with “them” referring to every part from breakfast cereals to plane. Now, you possibly can step inside an outdated Mercedes manufacturing unit to discover precisely how they did used to construct them, with this explicit “them” being the long-lasting W116 S-Class.
The W116 was produced by Mercedes between 1972 and 1980 at its Sindelfingen manufacturing unit in Germany, which has about 100 years of historical past constructing automobiles for Mercedes-Benz. Again within the Seventies, Mercedes let a movie crew onto the manufacturing unit flooring to see the way it assembled its first S-Class, and the ensuing movie is a cacophony of handbook labor, controversial style decisions, and rudimentary car-building robots (since properly upgraded) on the manufacturing unit flooring.
The movie begins with a glance into just a few phases of the event of the W116. There are technical drawings exhibiting the design of the automobile, clay fashions of the completed design, and pictures of the W116’s V8 engine present process exams on a dyno rig.
Growing a flagship
As soon as the event of the automobile was full, it was displayed on the Paris Motor Present again in fall 1972, the place the W116 made its public debut. After that, Mercedes was able to kick off mass manufacturing of the brand new flagship.
The primary stage of the construct for the automobile begins on the press store, the place huge sheets of metal are reduce right down to measurement and stamped to kind the physique panels of the W116. Enormous presses churn out fenders, wheel arches, and different panels which are important for the automobiles. The metal chassis of the automobile is then assembled and the physique panels are lined as much as be welded into place.
At this level, the hood is connected up entrance and the doorways are additionally bolted into place. All the welds on the automobile are then smoothed over and the shell of the automobile is checked by Mercedes engineers.
Ending the body
As soon as it is signed off, the body of the S-Class is dipped into an enormous tank that is crammed with a particular liquid to assist forestall the metal work from corroding over time. The underside of the automobile can be sprayed to deal with the surfaces, earlier than primer is utilized to the bodywork and several other layers of paint are sprayed on prime.
Over the following few phases of manufacturing, staff crowd round every body becoming the dashboard and inside, in addition to the liner for the trunk of the automobile. The wiring is all woven into the automobile at this stage, and all method of checks are carried out on the elements as they’re bolted into place.
Trim items on the outside, headlights and taillights are the following to go in, earlier than the gleaming Mercedes grille is fitted up entrance. Lastly, the home windows and chrome particulars are fitted to the automobile earlier than it’s handed off to the following division.
All of it comes collectively
Whereas all that is occurring, one other space of the plant assembles the transmissions and engines that, as soon as full, are joined collectively and dropped into place on the entrance of the S-Class. The axles and different mechanical elements are put in, earlier than the wheels may be fitted at every nook and the completed automobile is handed over to high quality management for a full swimsuit of checks.
The manufacturing unit that every one that is filmed at continues to be owned and operated by Mercedes-Benz, and it nonetheless builds the S-Class there to today. The manufacturing traces have all been refined and up to date through the years — as has the S-Class itself — so now the plant churns out greater than 200,000 automobiles yearly. On the time that this movie was produced, the output was nearer to 100,000 models per yr.
If you wish to head inside extra outdated factories to see how issues was achieved, head right here to see how the bizarre three-engined DC-10 was constructed again within the Nineteen Sixties.
