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Tangentially related to this article is Simon Winchester's latest book "The perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World". One of the chapt

by msisk6 8y ago

Tangentially related to this article is Simon Winchester's latest book "The perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World". One of the chapters in this book is about the differences between the hand-built cars of Rolls Royce (and their origin story which I never knew) and Henry Ford's production line that required interchangeable precision parts.

Theodores 8y ago
During a childhood visit to a car factory I noticed how the panels for the small, mass-market, fairly horrid hatchback went together perfectly whilst the panels for the luxury low-volume saloon needed lots of men with actual hammers to bash into shape. The tooling used to make the hatchback had cost a fortune and was the finest German stuff. The tooling used for the luxury saloon was a lot older and therefore worn. There were no backup dies in the worn tooling so over time the panel fit only got worse with once fine details no longer sharp. The executives driving their luxury saloons would probably have been horrified if they had known that it was the cheap cars that went together properly in an exact manner with their cars being the ones needing to be bashed to 'look right'. They would also have been horrified to see the same facility used for making panels with everything being 'just being a bit of tin' to the staff rather than their pride and joy. Having had the reality of luxury exposed as it being hand made, bashed into shape at such a formative age I have always wanted the robot built products, e.g. the mass market car rather than the bashed into shape expensive version. The deluxe cars of today are still very much 'bashed into shape' in ways that they always have been. The BMW car brand 'Rolls Royce' very much hand-craft cars as they always have, they are not doing it wrong by not re-designing their products to make it so a rival can churn out millions of identical clones. The original aerospace 'Rolls Royce' was in the same position, making a modest amount of engines and not in 'total war' mode. Their less than precise drawings were fine for what they were doing, they had people to bash stuff into shape, 'luxury auto style', with that making economic sense. The war changed everything though.

by msisk6 8y ago

Theodores 8y ago

During a childhood visit to a car factory I noticed how the panels for the small, mass-market, fairly horrid hatchback went together perfectly whilst the panels for the luxury low-volume saloon needed lots of men with actual hammers to bash into shape. The tooling used to make the hatchback had cost a fortune and was the finest German stuff. The tooling used for the luxury saloon was a lot older and therefore worn. There were no backup dies in the worn tooling so over time the panel fit only got worse with once fine details no longer sharp. The executives driving their luxury saloons would probably have been horrified if they had known that it was the cheap cars that went together properly in an exact manner with their cars being the ones needing to be bashed to 'look right'. They would also have been horrified to see the same facility used for making panels with everything being 'just being a bit of tin' to the staff rather than their pride and joy. Having had the reality of luxury exposed as it being hand made, bashed into shape at such a formative age I have always wanted the robot built products, e.g. the mass market car rather than the bashed into shape expensive version. The deluxe cars of today are still very much 'bashed into shape' in ways that they always have been. The BMW car brand 'Rolls Royce' very much hand-craft cars as they always have, they are not doing it wrong by not re-designing their products to make it so a rival can churn out millions of identical clones. The original aerospace 'Rolls Royce' was in the same position, making a modest amount of engines and not in 'total war' mode. Their less than precise drawings were fine for what they were doing, they had people to bash stuff into shape, 'luxury auto style', with that making economic sense. The war changed everything though.