32
Motoring
CoastRider
CoastRider
- Edition 569
- Edition
- October
470 20th
- March
2015
5thwww.coastridersl.com
2013
James May takes on new car challenge
He may have left Top Gear, but James
May is back on TV screens next week in
two live specials showing how cars are
made.
May is joined by Kate Humble and car
designer Ant Anstead for BBC Two's
Building Cars Live programme, which
will broadcast from BMW's Mini plant in
Oxford.
The massive factory - which has its
own fire and ambulance station and rail
terminal - produces a car every 67
seconds.
"It's difficult to think of a subject that
lends itself better to live TV," says May.
"We're not going to be driving around
in cars very much - mainly we're looking
at stuff being conceived and being put
together."
He says that, unlike the pre-recorded Top Gear, the
pace of this car show will be dictated by the "beat" of the
car factory.
"If I talk for a minute on the assembly line, in that time
a whole car will have gone through."
What if the production line grinds to a halt during the
live show?
May says such events are rare, but he adds: "If that
happens, that is part of the reality of live TV - we'd have
to film it and watch them sort it out.
"They always do sort it out one way or another. In
some ways - but I wouldn't wish it on them - that would
be an exciting bit of the programme because you would
see this massive, complicated machine deal with a crisis."
Building Cars Live comes just days after May started
filming an Am azon Prime motoring show for 2016 with
former Top Gear colleagues Jeremy Clarkson and
Richard Hammond.
The trio left the hit BBC Two show earlier this year
after Clarkson's contract was not renewed following a
"fracas" with a Top Gear producer.
Round-the-clock robots
Viewers of the BBC Two live show will follow the
journey of a car from being welded by robots in the body
shop to when it is driven off at the end of the production
line.
In the body shop - a building the size of 16 football
pitches - hundreds of robots work almost round the
clock.
One section is nicknamed Jurassic Park because "one
of the robots looks like a dinosaur running up and
down", explains one Mini employee.
About 30 human technicians keep the robots
functioning smoothly, riding on scooters so they can
move quickly around the vast space.
Next up is the assembly hall, where the cars are
painted and fitted with doors, seats, wheels and engines
by teams of skilled workers.
Mini factory facts
• The first Mini rolled off the
production line at the Oxford plant
on 8 May 1959
• Output reached its peak in 196667, when 94,889 cars were made
• There are more than 4,000
people currently employed at Plant
Oxford
• Each Mini is made up of 4,000
different parts
• More than 1,000 robots are used
on the production line
• Pepper white is the favourite car
colour
Each car is marked with a barcode
so the robots can build the vehicle to
the exact specification requested by the new owner. It's
unlikely that any two cars on the production line are the
same.
"When you say, 'Production line,' you do think of
boiled sweets," says co-presenter Kate Humble.
"But these aren't sherbet lemons. Every single one is
different to the one behind it and as bespoke as the
person who's ordered it."
She says the whole point is to show what happens in
real time.
"People will get a sense it is happening now. Yes, you
could package it up and make a glossy documentary
about it - but it wouldn't be as exciting."
"It's a show about manufacturing and design and
human desire," adds May.
"The car is one of the most desirable things humanity
has every produced."
Building Cars Live is on BBC Two tonight 20 and
tomorrow 21 October at 20:30