Pack a seat in the auto parts city, and your car will be hand-made from now on!

Pack a seat in the auto parts city, and your car will be hand-made from now on!

When we buy a car, we will hear or see brands promoting that their vehicles are handmade and how many cars are limited. In fact, all car companies that flaunt "pure handwork" just regard it as a gimmick.

Chassis, engine and gearbox, the three most critical parts of a car, can't be made by hand at all, because the accuracy of CNC machine tools is not comparable to that of any "master" or "craftsman".

Many people may have heard of Nissan GT-R's so-called hand-built VR38DETT engine. After the rumor, some people mistakenly thought that the engine was made by hand. In fact, this engine is only assembled by hand, and all parts are produced by machine tools. Similarly, there are Mercedes-Benz AMG engines, which are also assembled by engineers, but Mercedes-Benz, as a luxury brand, is more talented in marketing, and finally it has to be affixed with a nameplate signed by engineers, while Nissan is not good at making such legends. Nissan's engineers have generously said that it only takes 3-4 months for workers to learn to assemble GT-R engines after Nissan's professional training.

Another legend is related to Honda, Honda Civic FD2? Mugen? RR, limited to 300 sets, is two seconds faster than ordinary FD2 in Tsukuba circuit. At that time, there was a saying that it was wooden root? RR's engine cylinder inner wall and piston have been artificially polished to obtain better performance. But in fact, Mulgan? There is no difference between RR engine and ordinary FD2 in hardware. Even with hand grinding, the performance of the engine will not improve, Mugen? The performance improvement of RR engine is mainly to adjust ECU.

The engine is still like this, not to mention the gearbox. Although 6AT is a very traditional product from the present point of view, it is a bit backward strictly speaking. However, it is still very difficult to build a reliable 6AT. Even the big manufacturers like GM and Ford have experienced the Waterloo of GF6, and the manufacturing accuracy of the gearbox is so high that it is impossible to "build it by hand". Of the three major pieces, two cannot be made by hand, so the word "pure" itself is not pure.

Yes, I didn't say that the chassis can't be made by hand, because there is indeed a car chassis with a high degree of manual participation, and that is Morgen in the UK. Although their chassis is also assembled, and the engine and gearbox are also finished products of Ford, BMW and Mazda, compared with other automobile manufacturers, they still maintain a high degree of manual participation in vehicle production, and the body is also made of wooden frames and aluminum plates. Generally speaking, they are also the most hand-made car manufacturers, and they have a good life.

Since there is no pure handwork, is it still meaningful?

At present, there are two main models sold by hand, one is Hypercar and the other is luxury car. Many Hypercar are restricted, not because they want to do so, but because they simply do not have the conditions for mass production. There are many very niche Hypercar brands, with only a few dozen employees, and they sell dozens of cars a year. If you can't recover the cost of building a mechanical production line, you should only focus on limited production, hand-made gimmicks and make toys for several people.

Compared with Hypercar, it is more difficult to manufacture a mass production car, especially to meet the needs of most people, at the same time, the price is not too expensive, and long-term reliability should be guaranteed. It can be said that the engineering and technical content of any high-quality mass-produced civilian car is far from Hypercar, which is sold in limited quantities and used as a toy for the rich.

Luxury cars have a high degree of manual participation, mainly because the interior parts are more exquisite. If a production line is designed for this purpose, the cost will be higher. For example, the interiors of Bentley and Rolls-Royce often use all kinds of leather above 15, as well as a large number of wooden decorative boards, and there are many parts with manual craftsmanship as their selling point. As for the gold thread of the Rolls-Royce body, it is said that only Mark? Mr. Ting can draw by himself, so he needs to make it by hand, which is a bit like "telling stories". Although Phaeton stopped production, it was also made by hand when it was first listed. In fact, this is only part of the internal and assembly process.

The personalized choice of luxury cars is also an important reason for the existence of hand-building. It is natural that car owners will have a million-dollar customized demand. It is precisely because of a large number of personalized customization that manual production is needed.

Handmade is reasonable, but there is absolutely no need to myth it.

As mentioned above, every car, whether it is a family car or a luxury car, will be manually involved, but to varying degrees. The main purpose of this paper is to explain that there is no need to emphasize manual manufacturing on the mechanical level in the increasingly industrialized automobile manufacturing industry. However, if the parts need to be polished by hand, it can only show that the parts are defective in production and need to be repaired by hand, rather than process improvement.

Hypercar is hand-built, limited because they do not have the conditions for mass production, not technical difficulty. Hand-made luxury cars are more out of brand positioning, customer personalized customization needs and high requirements for assembly technology.

So don't be superstitious about hand-made, believe me, you go to the auto parts city to pack a set of seats, and your car will be hand-made from now on.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.