Here’s a great way to spend thirty minutes touring Jaguar’s factory in 1961. Lots of detailed film showing how the legendary XK engine was built, the cars assembled, and the extensive test drive every Jaguar was subjected to, on public roads. A lot has changed in automobile production, and this film really evokes the sense of Jaguar being a cottage industry, on a large scale.
Anyone else see the resemblance between the Jaguar saloons and the last generation Lincoln Town Car?
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Interesting film. I did notice one curious bit, however. After the body is married to the chassis, the car is then driven to a separate assembly line, mostly regarding interior appointments, including the seats. Must have been a trick getting from one line to another!
Particularly if the car does not have a chassis in the first place!
Well, they do call it a “chassis” in the film: “Body and chassis are now ready to be married together”. It’s a matter of semantics. In this case, it (correctly) refers to the running gear.
Cool film perfect breakfast entertainment and they were well finished compared to some other efforts back in the day.
The amount of hand assembly looks impressive. Each individual car is almost custom built. But computers (and robots) do so many of these assembly tasks much more reliably and precisely. No wonder the manufacturing industry has been turned on it’s ear. For the workers, many of the chemicals and solvents used at the time would have been considered quite toxic or carcinogenic, by today’s standards. The paint booth workers look like they are wearing light dust masks. For everybody’s health, I think I’d prefer my car built using modern computer technology.
Yes, the robots do the work now letting the humans relax and enjoy all their free time
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I especially liked the scenes of the valve seats being inserted and the crank being balanced and bearing surfaces lapped. I can’t imagine that is done in any car plant these days.
Alistair
I came across this video a few months ago, and it is really wonderful. Things have really changed!!! It’s a shame those cars had such a reputation for unreliability, because there was clearly loads of love and care that went into manufacturing them.
Great find Paul. How many hours do you spend on youtube finding such things 🙂
First impressions are of the number r of processes completed by skilled machinists, the amount of manual handling involved and the lack of basic safety equipment.
I notice that the film was produced by the Production Engineering Research Association, part of pour Ministry of Technology in the 1960s. To show their films, a fleet of Bedford coach chassis were equipped with bespoke mobile cinema bodywork, and one has been recently restored http://www.vintagemobilecinema.co.uk/. I’d recommend you take a look!
You might like this as a contrast to the 1961 Jaguar film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8SQODNCIVs
Zero. I have no time to spend looking for things like this, I just stumble into them by accident one way or another. I forgot how exactly I ran into this one; it was a week or two ago, and I almost forgot about it.
I love the old open and dangerous industrial equipment being used by workers with cigarettes dangling from their lips. The footage at the beginning was interesting too, with the Jaguar sedan being driven in for service(no..really?) and the mechanic covers the seats with a flannel cover and drives the Jag up on an old single post hydraulic lift, cool stuff you just don’t see any more.
The guy with the wood-handle hone doing the crankshaft journals looked particularly scary. Don’t let OSHA in that plant.
Very enjoyable. Thanks!
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie since I had the pleasure of working on two S-Type Jaguars that belonged to a friend of mine. the ones we worked on had been later models with double wishbone rear suspension using coil springs.
I was particular impressed with the engine assembly. They took so much care about balancing all moving parts.
Wonderful. And I may be mistaken, but I think the fitter installing the sound insulation had “Elvis” chalked on the back of his overalls…