Hi everyone, Here's a quick trip report of my recent factory tour. It's a quick trip from London and highly recommended.

I was staying in central London and decided to rent a car and drive out to Gaydon. To avoid driving through London, I took the subway to Heathrow and drove from there. It's only about a 80 mile drive and luckily for me it was a sunny day and a very easy drive. It took about 5 minutes to get from Avis to the freeway and then a fairly straight shot to Gaydon. I thought I would have some trouble driving on the right side and shifting with my left, but was easier than I expected. Drivers were very courteous and only use the inner lane for passing.

About 10 miles before Gaydon was Prodrive.






After going thru security I was pointed to customer parking.




The facility was very modern and beautiful. It reminds me more of a tech campus in Silicon Valley. Right now they have a vanquish on top of the water.










I was given a little pin as well as a guest pass on arrival.





In the lobby there were a few nice Astons that I have never seen in the flesh.








After meeting my tour guide, we walked to a corridor before the entrance to the factory where they have some very special and historical Astons on display. As some of the cars are privately owned, the cars do get rotated throughout the year.








Unfortunately, once we got inside the factory, I was not allowed to take pictures of the production line. We started off with the interior production. The leather trim/stitching is worked on in teams of 2. To the left of that is the dashboard assembly. One of the seats that was being finished had some pretty bad wrinkling and the supervisor had them take the seat apart so that was a good sign.

I then had a quick chat with a guy doing the covering with the interior trim pieces and its pretty amazing that they still use tools such as one made out of real fish bone to get the leather to fit nicely.

Although it is said the cars are hand made, there are 3 robots that apply adhesive to the car, one was for the windshield, I forgot what the other two do.

There are 2 assembly lines in the factory, currently one is exclusively for the DB11 and the other for everything else. I was surprised at how many vanquish were being built. There are also some GT12s being built which was surprising as I thought they were all delivered. It also looked like there were some GT8s on the assembly line also.

I was told that all cars get a shakedown before delivery. They used to use the track that Jaguar owned but now they have a dyno room in the factory for that purpose.

The tour overall took about 2.5 hours. It was very nice to talk to the workers there as they were definitely very proud of the work they are doing and happy to talk with the owners.

Before I left, there was a DB11 on display in a room so I took a couple more snaps before heading out. I wasn't a huge fan seeing the car online, but it does look pretty good in person. The silver/metal pillar also looks pretty good on the display car, at least with that exterior paint.








My sales guy told me that I might see a special surprise in the factory. He was going 2 weeks after my trip. I was hoping to see a vantage replacement model. I ask my tour guide but she was not saying a word. When I left the factory, of course I saw a test mule with full zebra camouflage going the other direction but didn't have time to pull out my phone.

In terms of time, I left central London at 6:30, and got back to my hotel around 3PM. This included time I spent eating breakfast and lunch on the road as well as getting gas. If you leave straight from London you can probably cut at least 90 minutes from the trip as I spent that much to get and return the rental.

Of course it wouldn't be London without some crazy cars around. Like a gold or purplish RR.

 

Beautiful pictures! It really is awesome to go there.

The robots are used to epoxy the chassis together. You wouldn't want this to be done by hand, anyway, so it's a good use of robotic labor in an otherwise hand-building factory.

Btw, nice spot on Prodrive - that's a place I'd like to visit next time!

 

Thanks for sharing. Now I want to go!

 

Like those wheels on the DB11 rather than the DB10 inspired ones.

 

Thanks for sharing, I would love to go one day

 

Went twice, great experience.

 

Take me down to the paradise city!

 

Yep, going to add this to the list. Great pictures.

Regards

 

Very cool, nice post.
Thanks for all of the great photos as well. I would love to go one day, if my fear of flying ever abates, with what's been going on lately I'm not sure that's going to happen.
Ron

 

Cool and thanks for the pictures.

 

Definitely on the bucket list of thing to do, thanks for sharing.

 

Awesome, thanks for sharing!
CATTMAN

 

Thought I would bring this thread back up. I am planning to be in London in 5 weeks and have the time to drive up to Gaydon. Are reservations needed to get a tour?

 

Thanks for sharing. I agree with a comment above that I like those wheels on the DB11 better then then DB10 ones shown before.

 

Thanks for sharing. One of the members of our RROC went there and to the RR, and Bentley factories. Definitely some thing I would love to do. The man that owned my Vantage went there as it was being built. He emailed me a picture I would love to share but don't know how to post it here on the forum.