The Mercedes Factory Tour

Apart from going to the museums, one of the things we really wanted to do while in Stuttgart was tour the Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen Plant, where the S-Class, E-Class, C-Class, CL-Class, CLS-Class, and Maybach vehicles are made.  We had read that all you have to do is phone well in advance to make a reservation, but all of the numbers we tried went to automated messaging services that were in German!  Finally, on our first day in Stuttgart, Paul managed to find a phone number (+4970319070403) for the Mercedes-Benz European Delivery Center, which is at the Plant, and they were able to schedule us in for the English tour today, before our flight to Istanbul this evening.  We are so glad we had a late flight and could fit this tour in…

Since we had to check out of the hostel before heading to Sindelfingen, we stored our backpacks in a large locker at the main hauptbahnhof, where we caught the S-Bahn to Sindelfingen (you can rent lockers for €2 per hour €4 for 24 hours).  The train ride took about 30 minutes and then we hopped on a free shuttle to the Mercedes plant (a bus leaves from bus stop #9 or 10 next to the train station every half an hour).  When we arrived, we realized we could have brought our backpacks with us because they have luggage storage at the customer service center (which makes sense because most of the people that come here to take delivery of their new vehicle are from outside of Germany), but again, hindsight is always 20/20!

After checking in, we headed up to the customer lounge, where a number of people (most of them obviously waiting to pick up a new car) were enjoying the assortment of free drinks and snacks (things like crackers with smoked salmon, pastries, fruit, soup, etc.).  Since we had half an hour to kill, we grabbed a bit of food and a coke and sat down to watch people take delivery of their new car in the huge delivery bay below the lounge.  Paul was expecting the delivery area to be nicer than it was, but having worked at several dealerships, I was quite impressed – it’s the largest delivery bay I’ve ever seen (you could probably fit a hundred cars in total in the room) and as soon as one car went out, another one was moved in to take its place!  Later, on the tour, we learned that they deliver an average of 300-400 cars per day at Sindelfingen, which is astounding, compared to the 3-10 deliveries per day I used to deal with when I worked at Mercedes-Benz in Vancouver.

When it was time for the tour to begin, we were ushered into a room with six other people (all of whom were coincidentally here to pick up a new E-Class) for an audio-visual introduction, which told us a bit of history and some basic facts about the plant and which vehicles are produced where.  Our tour guide then gave us safety glasses and a headset so we could hear him once in the factory, and we hopped on a shuttle bus to get to the first building, where we saw robots weld and put together the body frame of the S-Class.  Seeing the robots move around and put things together with amazing speed and precision using laser sensors was probably the coolest part of the whole tour – I’d almost rather have one of the robots than one of the cars they’re putting together!  The safety glasses pressed against my eyeglasses was not a good sensation, but we were so close to the robots that we almost got hit by welding sparks a few times so I understand why they’re necessary

Once we finished in this building, we dropped off our safety glasses (thank God) and the shuttle bus brought us to the next building, where we saw dashboards (that had been put together and configured elsewhere) get mounted by robots into almost complete S-Class body frames, before the doors are installed.  From here, we walked along and saw the cars move backwards and forwards through 12 continuous assembly lines as the electrical components were hand installed by master level workers.  Our guide then walked us to another building which was attached to the one we were in, and we saw where the engines get mounted into the almost complete vehicles.  Unfortunately, the elevator which brings in the almost complete body frame had just malfunctioned, bringing the entire assembly line to a halt, so we didn’t get to see much of what goes on in this area.  

The entire tour took a total of about 2 hours and afterwards we caught the free shuttle back to the S-Bahn station to get back to Stuttgart.  I think it’s one of the coolest things we saw on this trip, especially since it was all totally free!  We felt a little out of place since we were the only ones in our group not picking up a car, and the snobby American couple from Alabama didn’t help (the wife had the nerve to say “have you held one of those keys in your hand? They’re wonderful” when we got to the final assembly area and I wanted to respond “B*tch please, I’ve driven every car they make except the SLR” but I held my tongue).  But we owned two Mercedes before we left on this trip and it’s likely we’ll get another when we’re done travelling, except next time, I’m taking European delivery!  For now, we’re hoping to get into the Honda factory tour when we’re in Japan next year – it would be interesting to see how their factory compares to the Mercedes factory!