π
2011-09-05 01:01
in Cars, Ncars
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Planning the car factory part of our Italy tour took a while. Lining up a visit of the local factories and museums was challenging, especially when the Italian labour force decided to have a strike on the second day, which caused the Lamborghini Factory to close (but not the other 2), and a bunch of trains to be cancelled.
Anyway, after arriving bright and early in Bologna and picking our rental car (it's a slightly longer drive than Maranello, but there are many more fast trains going to Bologna, so it was actually faster stopping there and getting a rental car).
The bull bar across the street is where the engineers eat and where you can rent cars for a fun drive.
We started with the factory tour, which was a bit rushed (busy day), but still quite interesting. The factory actually wasn't that big (I was surprised to see how much smaller Lamborghini was compared to Ferrari, the difference wasn't even funny). I did like the part where since they don't have their own racetrack, they just test drive their cars in the neighbouring streets with the police turning a blind eye of course, since it is Italy :)
I was nice to see a smaller factory though because you got to see the entire line, including the people who were processing cow leather, and trying to fit all the parts necessary for each car around the imperfections in each leather piece (10 cows for a car by the way).
They had two assembly lines, one for their "cheaper car", and one for the newer 700HP aventador. The newer car is actually sitting on a plate that is moved in the line using magnetic induction. They can get 3 cars out per day with 3 days for a car from beginning to end (not bad).
We then visited the fairly complete museum they have, nice collector pieces there.
3.5: 710HP V12 from 1991, impressive power for then
sucks when you get that one in your rear view mirror :)
that makes a nice wall ornament :)
they had some rare cars
I feel inadequate with my 300s when they have 335s :)
It was a nice visit, plenty of supercar p0rn and rare models that I never got to see elsewhere. |
