Ford GT production line!!!!!

[Vansquish]

Today I went on a tour of the Saleen and Wixom assembly plants for the Ford GT. I took something on the order of 150 pictures which I've since uploaded to a Sony Imagestation album ( http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2134681027 ). I've also got a few videos, which I suppose I'll probably upload to the same album once I figure out how to convert .mov into .avi or something of that ilk. Enjoy!!!

[callen]

you have to remeber to give us ur user and pass for imagestation...its too much work for us lazy guys to get our own user and pass when we dont use the service.

[deth]

holy crap! its a whole warehouse full of GTs! how'd u get so lucky :wink:

http://img60.exs.cx/img60/7494/c8-f60827b5.jpg
you should have just taken the key and run. kinda crappy keyfob for a $120k+ car tho.......

[racer_f50]

kinda crappy keyfob for a $120k+ car tho.......
no matter the price, its still a Ford :wink:

thanks for sharing your experience with us Vansquish, that must've been quite a sight 8)

[antonioledesma]

kinda crappy keyfob for a $120k+ car tho.......

remember, it's a ford and a nicer keychain/fob would make the car cost $2k more :lol:

[tigerx]

oh i love those picture so much, thanks a milliion Vanquish

[FPVPSI]

Great photos mate...i'm proud to be a Ford fan today...lol...I really like the silver/grey colored ones, subtle but still mean... 8) ...i wonder which GT is Clarksons...should have asked... :lol:

[Vansquish]

you have to remeber to give us ur user and pass for imagestation...its too much work for us lazy guys to get our own user and pass when we dont use the service.

psh...quiet you, it's not that much work hehehe...and I guarantee that at least some of the pics are definetely worth it

[budagboy2]

Very cool pictures, its weird i think the car looks horrible w/o a stripe :roll:

[nthfinity]

great shots, Vansquish!!!!!

oh man!!!
GREAT SHOTS!!!!
i saved each one! thanks for sharing :)

[possessed_beaver]

nice im curious, they allowed you to take you're camera in with you?

[sentra_dude]

Wow, so many GTs! :shock: Very cool, thanks for the pics...and I like the way it looks with or without stripes. 8)

[Vansquish]

nice im curious, they allowed you to take you're camera in with you?

Yup, they did amazingly enough. I brought my camera under the assumption that if I brought it in and asked and was told that they'd have to confiscate it, that I'd get it back at the end of the day, so it wasn't a major concern for me. As it turned out though, the only place they wouldn't allow photography was in the paint booth, but we weren't allowed in there in the first place, so it wasn't a big deal hehe.

[Wutputt]

Damn, that are a lot of GT's you saw!! Must been an amazing visit. Thank you for sharing those pics!

[nthfinity]

if you notice the patch of 'holes' in the under carriage of the GT on the left side... that is my dads legacy to the GT 8)

[Vansquish]

If you're referring to the "dimples" in the undertray beneath the passenger compartment, I know exactly what you're talking about...they act like teh dimples on a golf ball and by creating some turbulence near the surface, they help to accelerate the airflow beneath the car which in combination with the venturis, front splitter and the shape of the wheel openings helps to create downforce.

[nthfinity]

something else interesting to note, is there should not be so many GT's there... something is wrong with them, and i hope to find out why tomarrow

[styla21]

something else interesting to note, is there should not be so many GT's there... something is wrong with them, and i hope to find out why tomarrow
ooh, sounds interesting. I love this insider stuff.. 8) please keep us posted.
Thanks for the pics Vanquish! It's odd camera's wern't allowed in the paint room though - no immediate reason comes to mind. Can you elaborate there? :? :)

[Vansquish]

Well, we weren't even allowed into the paint shop, part of the reason for that is we weren't wearing appropriate attire for it, i.e. clothes which would not give off much in the way of dust. Other than that, I can only think that the paint process must be something different than normal, or that the paint colors themselves are supposed to be some secret recipe.

nthfinity-
As far as I could tell, many of the cars in that room were in the process of going through final checks before being shipped out to customers, i.e. going into a chamber that simulates heavy rain to check seals. I watched some go through electrical checks and a dyno run up to 70mph along with some heavy-duty clutch work to break the clutch in a little prior to delivery. Several of them had been built and painted, but needed stripes, so they were there to fix that problem, others had small paint defects and were there for touchups. Most however, were just waiting to be shipped out, each one had a little tag or a piece of paper masking-taped to the rear window with a location to which they were supposed to be delivered.

[nthfinity]

paint defects are usually the majority of the problems... but do not usually equate to more then a handful of cars per day(1-3) being w/out racing stripes is a costly mistake...

[stradale]

Very interesting pictures, vansquish! It's also a great sight to see so much of these wonderful cars at one time. I especially liked the silver and the blue ones (with or w/o stripes).

Are you one of the guys posing in front of the red or the black GT?

[DeMoN]

It must have been amazing to be there!

BTW If you havent figured it out yet, play the video in MOV with Quicktime and from the file menu you can export to .avi

Then you would have to compress the .avi to another .avi with DivX or anyother codec compression.

[Vansquish]

I"m the guy in the leather jacket with the camera strap across my chest. Those other people are a bunch of people who came on the tour without their cameras, but wanted evidence of the visit, so I took pics and emailed them.

[ikon2003]

Vansquish - great pics. Much thanks. Musta been a great experience.

I agree that the GT doesn't look as good w/out the stripe... crazy machine though.

As for those who think it's a hassle to sign up for imagestation, go to www.bugmenot.com and type in the URL and they'll give u a fake temporary account. mine was: "alexpark" psw: "boba" worked like a charm.