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Pack and Drive to the Car Factory
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Pack and Drive to the Car Factory
Helsinki to Uusikaupunki
October 3, 2001
Dear Family and Friends,
We made it. Everything fits in the car. (Picture #01). I would like to say it fits because we did a wonderful job of planning and packing. Not true. It fits because the day before we had taken our largest suitcase, filled it, and sent it to California. We gave up lots of music, some clothes, some camera equipment, some books and some things I couldn't figure out why I had packed in the first place. And, yes, it was more my stuff than Marianne's. No denying it, she had done a great job of cutting back.
Wednesday morning, we did have one more appointment with the car guy - to get the final information on car insurance. All along, we had trusted our dealer when he said this could be arranged. Unfortunately he was, in turn, depending on his insurance company to continue going along with past practices and this time the company said "no". Oops. Several calls later, the insurance company had modified the position to "maybe". Perhaps they were put off by our homeless status - who knows? The problem was not going to get solved quickly so we decided that "maybe" was good enough and signed a blank VISA slip for the insurance cost and got on the road. Yet another Trotters-take-a-risk adventure. Sheesh.
On the road, the weather was real (U.S.) "Northwest": rain, drizzle, sun all mixed together. (Picture #02) But the colors were better than any we had seen and that would remain true for the next several days as we discovered that we had hit Finland in the peak of fall colors. For those of us from the Western US, this is a real treat.
We had just one firm appointment for the day and that was at Valmet Automotive (Picture #03) for a factory tour. "Valmet"? Did our car look like a Valmet? Well, it is.
I had read about the shift of the Boxster production to Finland when we were first interested in the car four years ago. It seems the car was so popular when introduced in 1996 that Porsche could not keep up so they looked around for someone to put together their pieces. They settled on Valmet, in Uusikaupunki on the southwest coast of Finland based on the factory's experience assembling all Saab convertibles for several years. The German engineers had to admit that Finnish quality matched their own.
Unlike the Porsche tour in Stuttgart, where hundreds of customers can go through in a single day, we were definitely a special event for Valmet. Teija Ahlman, the Communications manager met us at the front door with Matti, a Valmet engineer, and started us with coffee in the spotless cafeteria. They explained the company history, starting as a custom car assembly plant in a joint venture with Saab 30 years ago. They have built several cars over the years and currently produce all Saab convertibles and about 70% of the Porsche Boxsters. Matti said he believed they were the largest producers of soft-top cars for the US market.
From the cafeteria, we went to the "weld shop" where individual body pieces, originating from German parts suppliers such as BMW, are put together. It was a fascinating process with both manual and highly automated steps. Toward the end of the first part, four robots toil over the major pieces automatically moving from weld to weld and even changing "hands" when needed for heavier or lighter welds. After this, the body gets measured in a laser measurement booth to make sure every piece is correct to within very tight tolerances.
I asked Matti what happens if something fails the test. He looked at me and said, "It's never happened." The testing is used to make minor adjustments in the production equipment if anything starts to approach an out-of-specification dimension. This was only one of many quality steps every Boxster went through.
From welding, the bodies are taken over to a paint building but we could not tour over there. We just saw silvery bare metal bodies lifted away only to return in the assembly building as bright and colorful Porsches and Saabs - or at least colorful bare bodies. It was a moth-to-butterfly metamorphosis.
In an assembly building as long as four or five football fields, thousands of parts are brought together for each car. Bodies and fitted with their innards and doors have their own sub-assembly line. A second major line assembles the chassis with engine/transmissions, wheels, and all the hidden operating pieces. The body and chassis lines come together for a five-minute "wedding" where three guys put it all together.
All this assembly is done in an environment as clean as the cafeteria. It's relatively quiet, very controlled but very active nonetheless. Every car is custom built to specific orders so the organization of bringing together the right Porsche and Saab pieces was most impressive. At the end of the final assembly line engines are first started, almost always successfully according to Matti, and each convertible is driven into a rain booth to check for leaks. In the last few days, as we have driven through fall rain, I have come to appreciate this particular quality check. Our car does not leak.
From here, every Porsche is "driven" on a test stand through a program that tries to test every function. It was spooky to see the cars, sitting on rollers but accelerating hard through the gears, braking with full force, flashing on and off lights and generally looking for problems. After this, each car is also tested on the test track at Valmet and, according to xxxx, sometimes on the roads around Uusikaupunki. That's the job I'd like.
On our way out, we checked the employee parking lot to see what quality cars the employees must drive. Bicycles. It turns out that very few of the cars made in Uusikaupunki are sold locally. The car tax in Finland is 100% so special cars become prohibitively expensive.
Overall, Valmet was an impressive demonstration and it definitely gave us more confidence in our own car. Confidence we would need as we were heading for the Arctic Circle in a couple days.
First though, a tour of nearby Torku, the first capitol of Finland. But that's another story.
Best regards and drive carefully,
John and Marianne.
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This page created on a Macintosh using PhotoPage by John A. Vink.