The glam
factory
Guido reckons that a tour
of your bike’s birthplace can be a life-changing experience...
It’s only
a guess, but I suspect many of us have at one time or another dreamt of working
for a motorcycle factory – preferably in some glam job like road tester
of the prototypes. Funny thing is about those dreams, though, is that the reality
often doesn’t measure up to the hopes.
Some years ago I interviewed one of Yamaha’s road testers, an Englishman
who worked across Europe. Sure his work sounded pretty good -- flitting around
various parts of the globe to ride the latest toy – until you learned there
was also a fair bit of tedium. Can whatever he discovered be repeated? If so,
how many times? How will this fit into the report forms?
For the majority, though, it all happens back at the factory, which is a whole
lot less glamorous. It’s taken all this time, but I finally got to tour
a factory earlier this year -- Triumph’s Hinckley set-up in the UK midlands.
Our guide was Nick Bloor, son of the revived brand’s founder, John Bloor.
He has an engineering qualification in his own right and, from what I’m
told, has worked his way up the factory food chain -- starting with sweeping
floors. Being the son of the boss seems to be little protection from derision.
There was plenty of good-natured ribbing, particularly whenever I got a reluctant
Nick to pose for a shot. He pleaded with me not to send any to the lads and
ladettes on the factory floor, or he’d have hell to pay…
Workplaces all seem to generate an atmosphere that no amount of window dressing
can disguise, and this place had a pretty good feel to it. The people working
there just seemed to quietly get on with life.
It’s only when you get to poke your nose inside the factory that you really
get a sense of the complexity and sheer bloody cost of a set-up like this. Triumph’s
floor is physically laid out along a path that follows the production cycle
of the machine. You can, via a few twists and turns along the way, follow the
raw cast engine pieces through to machining, then on to where they meet up with
frames, electrics, suspension and so-on. All the way out to the rolling road
for testing (where they get a quick burst to 60-70mph) and on to packing.
The fascinating aspect was the weird and wonderful mix of high tech alongside
hands-on feel. For example, there’s an area where someone sits and uses
some space-cadet technology to check samples of the crankshaft production to
ensure they’re remaining within fine tolerances. Barely 50 metres away,
there’s a bloke who does the final check of the bikes before they’re
crated and sent to parts distant. Apparently he’s checked most of the production
the factory has done since day 1 (early 1990s) and can tell in seconds if something
is wrong just by running a hand over key points of the machine.
As you wander about, it’s impossible to ignore the sheer expense of what
you’re seeing. Banks of high-end semi-auto machining booths, any of which
is probably roughly equal in value to my house.
Anyone can visit the factory, as it very early on established a tradition of
running regular tours for the public – something which, to its eternal
credit, has kept going.
I can recommend trying it, regardless of what you ride. You’ll never look
at your bike in quite the same way, ever again.
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