Robots may be taking over car factories around the world, but it could be a long time before they hit the Lamborghini headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy.
Lamborghini is famous worldwide for its front-line design language and state-of-the-art technology, however it is recently found out that the company uses entirely time-honed and human craftsmanship techniques to build their cars.
The Lamborghini Family
The employees work from 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. They can be easily identified, as they wear black uniforms that indicate whether they’re assembly line workers, part of the logistics team, assigned to the prototype-building division or someone else completely.
The company trains all of its employees internally, and every employee is encouraged to move from station to station and master new skills. Once an employee has spent enough time on the factory floor to know the Lamborghinis like the back of their hands, they’re then eligible to become a test driver.
Precision without Robots
All cars are assembled by hand. In the entire plant, there are only two robots, according to Digital Trends. There is a machine that drops the bodies onto the assembly line and a rotisserie that flips the cars upside down when needed. As a result of this, the factory is much quieter and much more spacious than people deem it to be.
Bodies and their panels arrive at the factory pre-painted and wrapped in protective sheets of plastic. The Huracán is painted by Audi in Germany and the Aventador is painted by Italian company, Imperiale. To ensure consistency, Imperiale assigns each Aventador to a single employee.
Once a car body reaches the factory, the first thing they do is remove the sheet of plastic and replace it with thick covers to ensure that the paint doesn’t get scratched or damaged as it goes down the assembly line.
From beginning to end, the Aventador spends 90 minutes at 12 stations, whereas the Huracán spends 40 minutes at 23 stations. Each is built on different assembly lines, and each station has a screen located above, tracking how long the car has been at the station. This enables the employees to manage their time efficiently.
The 10-cylinder and 12-cylinder engines are manufactured by an outside supplier and once delivered to the factory, they are assembled by hand and then bench-tested. An upholstery shop makes every part of the interior, including the seats, knee boosters and door panels.
At one end of the shop, there is a special booth that is capable of replicating a wide range of different lighting conditions. This booth tests whether the leather- or Alcantara-upholstered panels that make up a specific car’s interior are the same colour regardless of the light condition it is exposed to.
These interior parts are only sent for installation once they pass the test.
Before a car is delivered to its owner, it has to go through three, final rounds of testing.
The first round uses lasers and cameras to check and confirm that every component is precisely aligned.
The second round is running the car on a dyno, a treadmill for vehicles, for 40 minutes topping speeds of 180km/h to ensure that all mechanical components are working perfectly.
The last round is a 20-to-30 mile test drive of the car on public roads.
Lamborghini prides itself on keeping with tradition, and every single car built in Sant’Agata since 1963 is tested on the beautiful roads around the factory.
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