- Joined
- Nov 6, 2007
- Messages
- 13,619
- Location
- North Oxfordshire
- Car
- His - Denim Blue A220 AMG Line Premium / Hers - Obsidian Black R172 SLK55
Well, the deed is done: I am now the proud owner of my first Mercedes-Benz (a C220CDI Elegance auto in Tenorite Grey metallic) which my wife and I picked up from Sindlefingen last Thursday 
First thing to say is that the car’s great and on the trip home which was 779 miles including some sightseeing in both Germany and France, the trip computer says we averaged 50mph and 42.5mpg. Not bad for a brand new car with a tight engine and drivetrain that was cruised at 130kph on the autobahn’s / autoroutes and had a bit of city driving thrown in too. After reading some of the horror stories on this and other Benz forums regarding reliability in the time between me ordering the car last September and actually collecting it, I'm pleased to inform everyone that everything on it worked when I picked it up, still works today, and that nothing's fallen off or come loose. But there's still time, I suppose
The trip organisation was as efficient as I’d hoped for, with the Personal Collection Team in Milton-Keynes having been very helpful and accommodating and everything went like clockwork. Rather than stay in Sindlefingen we opted to stay in Stuttgart at the 5-star Le Meridien Hotel which involved a modest £25 per person per night premium and turned out to be a comfortable, modern, base just 10 minutes walk across the park to the Hauptbahnhof with its famous clock tower topped by the rotating three-pointed star emblem.
We took the early morning BA flight out of Heathrow on Wednesday, were met at Stuttgart airport by our taxi driver immediately after collecting our luggage and whisked straight to the hotel. Typical of the organisation and attention to detail was that while on route our taxi driver confirmed with the Collection Centre the time of the English language tour the next day so that we could arrange an appropriate time for him to pick us up from the hotel on Thursday. By the time we’d checked in, unpacked and spruced ourselves up it was still only 11:30am so we walked into town, took a look around and found somewhere for lunch. Then it was back to the station for a short 10-minute or so ride on the S-Bahn train to the Gottleib Daimler Stadion and then follow the signs on foot to the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Others have already posted lots of great pictures and info about visits to this museum so I won’t repeat their descriptions. Suffice to say that it tells a great story of the history of the marque illustrated by some fantastic vehicles and given context by a good deal of social history as you descend from one level to the next. Somewhat spookily, the very first panel I read in the museum was about the history of the three pioneers – Benz, Daimler and Maybach – and I was shocked to find that Karl Benz shared my birthday, albeit preceding me by 115 years
Apart from the fantastic collection of cars, one bit that was great fun was the Racing Simulator on the same level as the Silver Arrows collection, which cost €4 per person and was well worth it. One benefit of going in mid-January is that the place is very quiet, so you can get to admire the hardware at close quarters without hordes of people getting in the way.
Thursday morning came and our taxi picked us up at 10am as promised. About 20 minutes later we were dropped off at the Sindelfingen Customer Collection Centre. Boy, this place is slick! We told the receptionist who we were and were shown straight to one of the desks to complete the paperwork. There are two “zones” in this area, one for domestic customers and one for the rest of us and absolutely everything is geared up for rapid processing of the necessary formalities. Within no more than 15 minutes we’d completed the paperwork for the car, been given tickets for the 11:20 factory tour, agreed a collection handover time (they are allocated in 20 minute slots), been talked through a map of the collection centre, had our coats and bags whisked off to a cloakroom and been shown where to go at the allotted time to join our factory tour. Phew!
We took a look around the “Boutique” which had a good selection (but not so good as that at the museum shop) of branded apparel, model cars, wallets, keyrings, and other accessories like touch-up paint sticks, roof bars, locking wheel bolts and suchlike. We also took a look around the 4 or 5 cars in the “Mercedes-Benz Millionaire Club”. These are all customer cars which have covered at least 1,000,000 miles without major work and is as good a bit of brand image reinforcement as you could imagine. As we still had a good 20 minutes to kill before our factory tour we wandered upstairs to the gallery overlooking the collection hall where there were complimentary hot and cold drinks, pastries and other snacks on offer. A nice touch.
The factory tour itself began with a short film about Mercedes-Benz so that we were fully conditioned before going off to see the facility in the flesh. After the film our guide explained that the tour would cover two parts of S-Class production, bodyshell assembly and final assembly, and once we boarded the coach we were warned that we must not take any photographs, we must not use any audio recording devices and that our mobile phones must be switched off. Totally understandable, but it makes it more difficult to share the experience with you guys
I’m a manufacturing professional and have to say that what we saw was most impressive. It was the first time my wife had seen the inside of a car manufacturing plant and she was fascinated by it. Our guide was excellent, drawing attention to particular points of interest, inviting questions and giving knowledgeable and informative answers while always allowing the group to spend as little or as much time as they wanted at each stopping point. To give an idea of the level of automation employed, in the bodyshell assembly block I saw only two or three people as I walked around but lots of multi-function robots with some very expensive tooling! As you may expect the plant facility was meticulously clean and, even though robots can work just as well in the dark, well lit too. One interesting snippet from that part of the tour was that unlike many manufacturers who buy in small pressed components, Mercedes-Benz press all their parts themselves in-house. Another was that wherever adhesive/sealant was applied to a panel by robot prior to welding or riveting, there was a 100% “visual” inspection carried out by infra-red camera. One piece was actually rejected in the inspection process as we watched it and was placed in a reject stillage for later assessment by a human and rework if appropriate.
We then re-boarded the coach and were taken to the final assembly hall for the S-Class. This is organised in 6 parallel tracks running in alternate directions, and as the car completes the last workstation on each track it is then carried across to the next track on a chain conveyor to continue its build. Unsurprisingly the final assembly is predominately carried out by people who are organised into teams of 15 who change position on the line periodically to gain some variety. Robots are also used for some of the assembly process, typically for heavier tasks such as inserting and mounting the dash sub-assembly, or the assembly, placement and bonding of the panoramic roof. All parts and sub-assemblies arrive to the line stations in the correct sequence to mate up with a particular bodyshell which keeps lineside stocks low and external just-in-time supplier on their toes!
In total, the factory tour lasted about an hour and forty minutes including the short film at the beginning. One thing I would note is that anyone who has difficulty climbing stairs would find it difficult to participate in the tour because reaching the body assembly hall requires walking up several flights of the things. Some interesting statistics I picked up on the tour included:
All in all it really was a great way to take possession of a new car and I can understand why people who have done it once want to do it again. The C-Class may be the baby of the three-box saloon range but you still get well treated and thoroughly looked after. I’d recommend it to anyone!
First thing to say is that the car’s great and on the trip home which was 779 miles including some sightseeing in both Germany and France, the trip computer says we averaged 50mph and 42.5mpg. Not bad for a brand new car with a tight engine and drivetrain that was cruised at 130kph on the autobahn’s / autoroutes and had a bit of city driving thrown in too. After reading some of the horror stories on this and other Benz forums regarding reliability in the time between me ordering the car last September and actually collecting it, I'm pleased to inform everyone that everything on it worked when I picked it up, still works today, and that nothing's fallen off or come loose. But there's still time, I suppose
The trip organisation was as efficient as I’d hoped for, with the Personal Collection Team in Milton-Keynes having been very helpful and accommodating and everything went like clockwork. Rather than stay in Sindlefingen we opted to stay in Stuttgart at the 5-star Le Meridien Hotel which involved a modest £25 per person per night premium and turned out to be a comfortable, modern, base just 10 minutes walk across the park to the Hauptbahnhof with its famous clock tower topped by the rotating three-pointed star emblem.
We took the early morning BA flight out of Heathrow on Wednesday, were met at Stuttgart airport by our taxi driver immediately after collecting our luggage and whisked straight to the hotel. Typical of the organisation and attention to detail was that while on route our taxi driver confirmed with the Collection Centre the time of the English language tour the next day so that we could arrange an appropriate time for him to pick us up from the hotel on Thursday. By the time we’d checked in, unpacked and spruced ourselves up it was still only 11:30am so we walked into town, took a look around and found somewhere for lunch. Then it was back to the station for a short 10-minute or so ride on the S-Bahn train to the Gottleib Daimler Stadion and then follow the signs on foot to the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Others have already posted lots of great pictures and info about visits to this museum so I won’t repeat their descriptions. Suffice to say that it tells a great story of the history of the marque illustrated by some fantastic vehicles and given context by a good deal of social history as you descend from one level to the next. Somewhat spookily, the very first panel I read in the museum was about the history of the three pioneers – Benz, Daimler and Maybach – and I was shocked to find that Karl Benz shared my birthday, albeit preceding me by 115 years
Apart from the fantastic collection of cars, one bit that was great fun was the Racing Simulator on the same level as the Silver Arrows collection, which cost €4 per person and was well worth it. One benefit of going in mid-January is that the place is very quiet, so you can get to admire the hardware at close quarters without hordes of people getting in the way.Thursday morning came and our taxi picked us up at 10am as promised. About 20 minutes later we were dropped off at the Sindelfingen Customer Collection Centre. Boy, this place is slick! We told the receptionist who we were and were shown straight to one of the desks to complete the paperwork. There are two “zones” in this area, one for domestic customers and one for the rest of us and absolutely everything is geared up for rapid processing of the necessary formalities. Within no more than 15 minutes we’d completed the paperwork for the car, been given tickets for the 11:20 factory tour, agreed a collection handover time (they are allocated in 20 minute slots), been talked through a map of the collection centre, had our coats and bags whisked off to a cloakroom and been shown where to go at the allotted time to join our factory tour. Phew!
We took a look around the “Boutique” which had a good selection (but not so good as that at the museum shop) of branded apparel, model cars, wallets, keyrings, and other accessories like touch-up paint sticks, roof bars, locking wheel bolts and suchlike. We also took a look around the 4 or 5 cars in the “Mercedes-Benz Millionaire Club”. These are all customer cars which have covered at least 1,000,000 miles without major work and is as good a bit of brand image reinforcement as you could imagine. As we still had a good 20 minutes to kill before our factory tour we wandered upstairs to the gallery overlooking the collection hall where there were complimentary hot and cold drinks, pastries and other snacks on offer. A nice touch.
The factory tour itself began with a short film about Mercedes-Benz so that we were fully conditioned before going off to see the facility in the flesh. After the film our guide explained that the tour would cover two parts of S-Class production, bodyshell assembly and final assembly, and once we boarded the coach we were warned that we must not take any photographs, we must not use any audio recording devices and that our mobile phones must be switched off. Totally understandable, but it makes it more difficult to share the experience with you guys
I’m a manufacturing professional and have to say that what we saw was most impressive. It was the first time my wife had seen the inside of a car manufacturing plant and she was fascinated by it. Our guide was excellent, drawing attention to particular points of interest, inviting questions and giving knowledgeable and informative answers while always allowing the group to spend as little or as much time as they wanted at each stopping point. To give an idea of the level of automation employed, in the bodyshell assembly block I saw only two or three people as I walked around but lots of multi-function robots with some very expensive tooling! As you may expect the plant facility was meticulously clean and, even though robots can work just as well in the dark, well lit too. One interesting snippet from that part of the tour was that unlike many manufacturers who buy in small pressed components, Mercedes-Benz press all their parts themselves in-house. Another was that wherever adhesive/sealant was applied to a panel by robot prior to welding or riveting, there was a 100% “visual” inspection carried out by infra-red camera. One piece was actually rejected in the inspection process as we watched it and was placed in a reject stillage for later assessment by a human and rework if appropriate.
We then re-boarded the coach and were taken to the final assembly hall for the S-Class. This is organised in 6 parallel tracks running in alternate directions, and as the car completes the last workstation on each track it is then carried across to the next track on a chain conveyor to continue its build. Unsurprisingly the final assembly is predominately carried out by people who are organised into teams of 15 who change position on the line periodically to gain some variety. Robots are also used for some of the assembly process, typically for heavier tasks such as inserting and mounting the dash sub-assembly, or the assembly, placement and bonding of the panoramic roof. All parts and sub-assemblies arrive to the line stations in the correct sequence to mate up with a particular bodyshell which keeps lineside stocks low and external just-in-time supplier on their toes!
In total, the factory tour lasted about an hour and forty minutes including the short film at the beginning. One thing I would note is that anyone who has difficulty climbing stairs would find it difficult to participate in the tour because reaching the body assembly hall requires walking up several flights of the things. Some interesting statistics I picked up on the tour included:
- The Sindlefingen site covers approximately 2 square kilometres and has around 37,000 employees
- Some 9,000 of these work in the Research & Development facility
- The plant produces 2,000 passenger cars a day of which 390 are S-Class saloons (both standard and LWB variants) and 50 CL coupés produced across two shifts
- A Mercedes car takes approximately 3 days to build: 1 day to press and build the bodyshell; 1 day for painting (including curing time); 1 day for final assembly
- The overall TACT time (i.e. the rate at which vehicles complete build) for the S-Class is 2 minutes
- The overall TACT time for other models can be as short as 25 seconds
- The plant has its own railway “station” where trains are loaded with approx 700 cars for export every day
- A further 900 cars a day leave by road transporters for distribution
- An astonishing 400 cars a day are personally collected by their new owners (I said the collection facility was slick!)
All in all it really was a great way to take possession of a new car and I can understand why people who have done it once want to do it again. The C-Class may be the baby of the three-box saloon range but you still get well treated and thoroughly looked after. I’d recommend it to anyone!
enjoy the new car regards jon
