Saturday, February 23, 2002

How long to build a car?

From the NewsGroup rec.autos.tech

Anyone know (on the average) how long it takes to build a vehicle? I'm curious as to how long a Suburban, Camaro, Mustang spends on the assembly line. Then I would like to know about how many man hours it takes to build the entire car (assemble the engine, trans and other components before they arrive on the assembly line).


Edward said-

It's been a few years since I've toured an assembly plant but those that I did, were popping cars off at about 60 to 65 minutes during peak sales periods. That's from the moment the frame (remember them?) was placed on the conveyor to the moment the car was driven off the end of the line. Actually, I did see a car with a frame being built recently at the Arlington Assembly Plant in Arlington, Texas near Dallas. That was the year the Chevrolet Caprice was taken out of production. The line was moving pretty much dead slow. I would imagine that the unit body cars could be assembled in the same amount of time or better.