Atlantica - 01.03.2004, Síða 14

Visiting the German town of Wolfsburg, where Volkswagen’s
headquarters are located, is a curious experience. Nearly all the
cars on the road are VWs – it’s like no other cars are manufactured
in the whole world. Giant chimneys rise to meet the sky and the
plant itself is huge, with a combined area of six square kilometres
within which there are 75 kilometres of road. The main building
holds the honour of being the largest car manufacturing plant in
the world, covering an area of 1.6 square kilometres where
around 50,000 people work at producing some 2,700 Golf and VW
Bora per day.
The plant was originally constructed in 1938 and 1939, with
production of the VW Beetle for the consumer market beginning
in 1945. Until 1974, some 12 million VW Beetles passed through
their production doors, or until the successor of that much-loved
automobile was introduced: the VW Golf. It, too, was a hit and
now, 30 years later, the Golf is the best-selling car in the history
of automobile manufacturing. Some 23 million VW Golf have
been sold thus far, now that the fifth generation of Golf is about
to hit the streets.
Volkswagen Corporation is a giant. Bearing testimony to this is
Autostadt, VW’s exhibition area and amusement park in
Wolfsburg. All Volkswagen’s subsidiary brands are displayed
there, each in its own exhibition hall, and an entire building is
devoted to the history of VW, where old and new cars, as well as
prototypes, are on display. Autostadt is a tremendously enjoyable
and well-designed exhibition area that attracts 2.5 million visitors
per year, twice as many as originally expected when the park
opened in June 2000.
For car aficionados, an exhibition area of this kind is tremen-
dous fun. Yet even more enjoyable is taking a stroll around the
plant itself and seeing how flat steel rolls are stuck into gigantic
presses that bend and shape the steel into proper form. The parts
then move forward on an assembly line where robots fit and weld
them together until suddenly an item has been created, a new car,
almost without intervention by human hands. The Golf is assem-
bled by robots, all except the windows that are fitted by men with
moustaches and hair that is long in the back. Perhaps the great-
est surprise, however, is that there seems to be no order to the
assembly line. The cars glide by in all shapes and colours and the
robots never miss a beat, whether the steering wheel is on the left
or on the right, the car has a boot, is a hatchback, or is just an
ultra-regular Golf.
Not many car manufacturers produce as broad a line of cars as
Volkswagen, ranging from the Lupo compact to the Phaeton lux-
ury vehicle. The Golf, however, is of primary importance. It makes
up half of Volkswagen’s production, so when a new type is intro-
duced VW holds its collective breath and hopes that all goes
according to plan. It is safe to say that the new Golf is off to a roar-
ing start, since British auto magazine What Car elected it Car of
the Year in its latest edition. Not a bad beginning for the fifth gen-
eration of this 30 year-old automobile.
Golfing
airmail
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS WILL SEE THE INTRODUCTION OF A NEW VW GOLF, AN AUTOMOBILE THAT MAKES
UP A FULL HALF OF THE OUTPUT OF THIS LARGEST-BY-FAR CAR MANUFACTURER IN EUROPE.
PÁLL STEFÁNSSON VISITED VW’S PRODUCTION LINES AND BEHELD THE MAKING OF THE MODERN AUTO.
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HEKLA, VW’S ICELANDIC DEALERSHIP, INVITED PÁLL STEFÁNSSON TO THE HOME OF THE GOLF IN ANTICIPATION OF ITS LATEST GENERATION.
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