After eating, my wife and I walk up to the bar to pay the bill, and while waiting, I notice these two guys wearing these cool black Lotus Sport jackets. I ask them where they got those jackets, because I was in the store earlier that day and all they had were green jackets. They say they work for Lotus, and they can get me a black one like theirs! I introduce myself, and they introduce themselves. Chris Arnold! (co-founder of Lotus Sport and Performance!) and Glen Smith, works with Chris. I ask them if there are any plans for a supercharger and am told not any time soon. What about a limited slip diff? “We’ve already got that!” So there you go Just not for the Fed yet.
The next morning we went back to Lotus. Time for the Factory Tour! They normally hold tours on Wednesday, but we were able to get one on Friday. They just charge you a little more.
We arrived at 8 am for our tour. Everyone that works at Lotus arrives then too. This was cool because we got to see what everyone drives. Lots of different cars, but about 25% to 30% were the Elise. Of those, 90% were Storm Titanium. We couldn’t believe it. ST after ST pulled into the factory. (I later asked what the deal was with that and was told it can really handle the dirt the best).
Before the tour begins, they send you over to the Lotus gift shop to wait (and shop). Upon entering, you are first greeted with two Lotus vehicles in the vestibule. The Lotus Type 119 and the Lotus Type 119C. These are soap box racers! The Type 119C is the current world champion. In 2004 they set a record and blew away second place Bentley by 3.5 seconds. The actual Type 119C can be seen at:
http://www.tenlinks.com/news/PR/delmia/070504_soapbox.htm
and the alternative designs for it can be seen at:
http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars/elise/thecar/alternatives/lotus119.html
In the main lobby of the shop sits a Federal Elise in what color? ST of course. On the walls are fancy posters of most all of the cars in Lotus’ history all the way up to the Exige. We were sitting on the couch there in the gift shop waiting when this guy quickly walks through the main door, across the lobby and over to the door next to us. He swipes his card through the security box, the door opens and he goes through. My wife and I look at each other: “That was Tony Shute!” We’re sitting in Lotus for less than five minutes and we’ve already seen the Head Project Manager for the Elise! Pretty cool. Our tour guide, Annette Lancaster, comes in and introduces herself. She’s very outgoing, cheerful, and enthusiastic, we can tell this is going to be a great tour. Two other guys joined us for the tour.
Off we all go to the factory. We head back outside to go to the production building. While walking across, we hear a terrifying sound coming from the test track which is 100 yards from us. Some car is being pushed to the limit, big time. Screeching tires give way to a screaming engine. RRRRAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!! An Arctic Silver Exige appears as a blur coming out of the Factory Straight and then blazes into the Clark and then the Chapman curves going SIDEWAYS at what must be around 100 mph through each turn tires begging/screeching for mercy!
“What the hell was that?” I ask. “Oh they’re just testing something.” Annette says as if cars drifting sideways at 100 mph is an everyday thing. (I guess it is for her!)
Then suddenly, we’re inside the factory. My wife and I couldn’t stop smiling. Here is where they’re all built! WHOO HOO! It is true that there really aren’t any machine sounds, just mostly the sound of music that they have playing while they build the cars. The first thing we see is where they glue the composite panels together. These panels are resin injected into molds in France. That’s right, every Federal Elise body panel is made in France, not Hethel. Once they come out of the molds, they are shipped to the factory at Hethel, and then bonded. Now if you own an Exige, the story is a little different. The Exige has all of it’s side panels made in France, but the front and rear clams are made 10 miles down the road from Lotus. The chassis is also made off site from the extruded aluminum at Hydro in Denmark.
So when the body panels come back, they’re all white and raw. They still have to have the edges cut off of them, and then all the little pieces and parts have to be glued together. The gluing process used to take 25 minutes to bond, but they have recently found a new bond that cures in 18 minutes, shaving 7 minutes off of each bonded component. Just seven minutes saved, but hey, you add up those seven minutes for all those parts and all those cars and that means you and I get our cars sooner! Speaking of which, each and every car takes about 104 man hours to complete, On average it takes about a week to 10 days to make an Elise. The bonding of the body panels takes about 2 and one half man hours to make per car. After the panels are bonded together, they need to be ready for the paint. The molded panels are so smooth that they actually have to be sanded to roughen them up so that the paint will stick to them.
We then walk over to the painting station. It’s a huge area that has various sealed chambers, but on one end it’s open and we can see some painters in their painting suites with all kinds of colors sprayed onto them. On the other side are some people in lab coats applying different waxes to some hard tops. These people are lined up and work in a “hallway” of fluorescent lighting so they can see the details clearly. The actual painting process is completely done by hand, using a water based DuPont paint. This paint is much more environmentally friendly, but a little harder to work with. There are six layers in the painting process. The first two layers are a primer. Each layer of primer gets cooked in the oven for 40 minutes! After those primer layers are done, then comes the actual paint. Again, two layers are used, but this time each layer is sent into the oven for 80 minutes per layer! Next comes the gloss. Two layers of gloss as well, each layer going back into the oven for 40 minutes this time. A huge amount of time is spent painting the cars. In fact, 26 man hours are used for the painting. This equates to almost 1/4 of the cars’ build time! Since this takes so long, they have the panels painted two days ahead of the production line.
From there we moved to another part of the building, the actual “production line”. Which is really two production lines. The two lines are each about 40 yards long. One line is strictly for the Federal Elise, the other line is for the Euro spec Elise, the Exige, and the Vauxhall VX220. For those not in the know, the Vauxhall is built on the Elise chassis and is extremely similar to the Elise, but has been “GM/Opel-ized”. Uggh.
The chassis comes pre-made and ready to go onto the production line. It rides a dolly, gets turned onto one side, and hangs from chains from a pulley above all at various points along the line. We entered the room at the “end” of the line, so to get to the front end of the production line, we walked along the back of the line. This wall is lined up with all the painted body panels for the cars they are building. All the panels needed for one car are shelved on a three layer shelf clustered together by themselves. Then two feet away are all the panels for the next car and so on and so on. There were about 18 “cars/panels” lined up, all extremely shiny new! Not a single Krypton Green, or Aztec Bronze, or Chrome Orange, or Aubergine Purple or Starlight Black, or Racing Green to be seen. Definitely no Lazer Blue either. There were lots of Storm Titanium, and Ardent Reds, a couple of Graphite Greys,one Bordeaux Red and Magnetic Blue, one Nightfall Blue and some Saffron Yellows.
And one other color. That’s right, one OTHER color.
I hate to even bring this up because they said I’m not allowed to talk about it. All I can tell you is that I got to see a “possible” new color that they are trying out. It was beautiful. And that’s all I can say. REALLY sorry about that.
I was all over that color, stopping to closely examine it while Annette was leading the others to the production line. “Stop looking at that color!” I get scolded and continue on to join my wife and the other two on the tour. “Is there a name for that color?” I asked? “No, it’s just –“ and she called it by it’s basic color.
So now we are at the start of the two production lines, and our path will be to walk along between the two of them. In between us and the actual people working along the line are big parts bins that they dive into and grab things from at various points. The production line is divided into five or six sections. Each section has a team of workers that put on and do specific things. A worker comes by and grabs a booklet out of a box on the floor. “What are those?” I ask pointing to the box. Annette explains that those are the actual build orders. Each booklet contains all the info for the car, the options, where it’s going, who’s going to own it, etc. It is at this point I contemplate grabbing the 50 or so booklets remaining in the box and quietly throwing them into the nearby trash bin, thus moving myself up 50 spots on the list. Annette then tells us that each section along the line has its own group of workers, and on the Federal Elise line, they each get 40 minutes to finish their work plus or minus up to 3 minutes. The Euro spec line gets 44 minutes. She explained that the Euro line gets 4 extra minutes because they have to switch between cars as they have three different kinds to build over there.
It was at this point that I noticed a chart printed on an 8 1/2 x 11 standard sheet of paper. The chart was taped onto a support beam right above the box with the order folders. A worker came up and highlighted a line on the paper.
He left, I read. The chart was a list of all the cars being built that day. Each car was listed with it’s VIN, the dealership it was going to, the options, the kind of car, the color, etc. All in chart form. I scanned it over as quickly as I could knowing that I was about to get in trouble, when I saw that in the row of colors, they had listed the different colors we all know, and the one new color (that’s “NOT a new color, but just a trial to see if they like it”) but it does indeed have a name! And it’s on a list saying it’s going to certain dealerships. Then I noticed the codes for the car names on the top. I think many of you know their code names, but for those that don’t:
Croft is the name they use for the Federal Elise (It’s the name of a race track)
Zolder is what they call the Exige
Cyclone is the Euro Elise.
It was at this point that I got yelled at to stop reading the chart.
I then asked her how many cars they are making a week. Funny I should ask that, because it just changed this week. Four days ago, on Monday, October 4, they began a new skeleton crew night shift. They have gone from around 88 cars a week to 120 cars a week. They will now boot out 4000 cars this year, which is up from 2500 total last year. In fact, 2500 will shoot out to just the U.S. this year. I asked her about the new night shift and how many people are on it, and she said that it's only half the number of people that they use for the day shift. She added that they get 80 minutes per section instead of 40, so it all works out.
Walking along the production line, I could see Croft written on a parts bin, but I couldn’t see what was in it. It was at this point I finally noticed that all the people putting together these cars are all young. If I had to make a guess, I’d say that most of these guys are low 30’s and younger. I’m standing next to a bin full of gas tanks. If you’re curious, the gas tanks are long and skinny and rectangular. I saw them putting an engine in and asked Annette why the exhaust comes from below on the 190R and the Fed, and shoots straight out of the others. She said that is was because of where the exhaust comes out of the engine on the Toyata engine. She said that engine comes from the Celica. Which we all know, but I liked the way they pronounce it over there. Sell-EEK-a.
We reached the end of the line, and Annette explained that if they were to put wheels on the car at this point, it would be completely drivable. We turned the corner to the next room. Here the cars really start to look finished. There are a bunch of Exiges in one corner, there are some Vauxhall 220’s too. The Exige really, really looks good in Krypton Green. All those black accents, ooh baby it looks incredible.
HEY! What’s that color? I say pointing to a Vauxhall VX220. “Oh, that’s called Lightening Yellow”. Lightening Yellow is exactly right between Saffron Yellow and Krypton Green. Not available on any Elise/Exige.
So here is where they put the final pieces on, including the wheels. The headlights are put in, and the car is examined closely for any kind of imperfection. If just one thing isn’t right, the car is taken out, and put into a special area where it will be taken care of immediately.
Next is the Dyno room. This used to be where they would take it out on the test track, but that’s no more. Now it sits on the dyno. First the front wheels go on and the roller gets them spinning up to about 80 miles an hour. Then the tech guy “driving” watches this computer monitor that displays a bar along the bottom and he has to put the brakes on at a certain pressure to keep the bar within a certain parameter, as the speed changes, so must the pressure he’s applying to keep it in that parameter. Then the back wheels go on and he drives it through all the gears and checks it all out.
After the dyno, the car then goes into the rain garage where it is pounded with “rain” for 1 and half minutes. Then its off into the wind room for a quick blow dry.
After that, the car goes to the final inspection where it is wheeled down another long “hallway of lights” where all these people in bright white lab coats with clipboards give it a final check. If it passes the tests, then it ready to be shipped. The Euro spec cars go outside and sit in a special parking lot, and the Fed Elise goes into another building (dry storage) and waits inside. Those will get an outdoor beating of their own when they cross the sea.
After that we went over to Lotus Sport where they make the super secret stuff! I saw Glen again, but not Chris. Annette took us up to the second floor where we could over look the circuit for tomorrow’s fun. It had sprinkled a few minutes before, and now a huge full rainbow went all the way from the Windstock turn to the North Hairpin. I couldn’t believe it, and no camera!
Well, that was the tour, and if you’re still reading this, then I’ll share the Driving Experience with you now.
