On the one hand, it’s like watching Darth Vader being built. On the other, it’s like zooming around a very cold, grey version of Pee-Wee’s playhouse where no one talks and certainly no one screams the word of the day.
A new video showing how 911 engines are assembled in Zuffenhausen is exactly the type of hushed-tone, metals-clinking, pressurized-air jet zinging assembly line work that you would want to see regarding your 911.
What might surprise you is that it’s mostly work performed by people, albeit heavily aided by machines. Rarely do you see anyone seriously strain to perform an action. Even as they wield machinery that weighs hundreds of pounds, they do so as deftly as a piece of pie is passed from one person to another at a summer’s afternoon picnic.
A lot of tools seem to hang in the air from rubber hoses. A section of the engine swings into position in front of a worker who then performs his six or seven little tasks. He then swings it back and away it goes, whisked off to its next caretaker.
It’s a great example of how Germany rewards its high-tech manufacturing jobs. Though machines are instrumental, the skillfulness with which they are wielded comes only from a highly-trained worker. It’s also reassuring, as a Porsche owner, to see your future engine laboriously and meticulously put together by hand.
Toward the end you can even see pieces that a layman can identify: spark plugs inserted into their cylinders; throttle bodies sitting on top like a crown jewel; the central flywheel ready to meet its transmission; and air hoses all over the top to create the sonorous warble of a Porsche flat-six.
It’s enough to make to make a full-grown person suck in their breath. If only they let us hear one of these beauties! Better still, get yourself over to Leith Porsche in Cary to hear one for yourself in person.
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