Like a Dell factory but what comes out is a LOT more fun: We visit Aston Martin

You can understand precision with something like making a mechanical watch but when each of the elements weighs large fractions of a tonne it’s very impressive. This is all the more so because each car is different. There is a mix of manuals and autos, left and right hand drive, V8s and V12s, Vantages, DB9s, Vanquishes and Rapides all on the same production line.

What comes down the body line is matched to what comes down the chassis line, with the bodies on cranes and the chassis on trollies. The whole thing works on a heartbeat of 25 minutes. While mass produced cars move continuously through a factory, Aston Martin stops each car at a workstation for the individual set of tasks to be completed. Marrying the powertrain to the body sees the body drop down to align with the jig which holds the powertrain, then some connections are made between the two before the trolley rises to complete the job and fewer than 20 bolts are put in place to hold them together.

What is now pretty much a car then has the doors added – and although there are no robots in this car factory there are special devices to help the workers with getting the components in place.

The cars move along the production line to a 25 minute heartbeat

Plenty of industries offer build-to-order, you can visit a Dell factory and see similar tracking of components to match a customer's requirement but the level of variation in Gaydon, where numerous sub-assemblies have to be built and held to match a constant production schedule is far more complex. With so much of the work being done by hand, many employees are trained in a number of operations to guard against the line grinding to a halt if a couple of people are ill. Holidays are mandated at times of annual shutdowns.

But what is most impressive is what comes out at the end: automotive jewellery. There is a rich new-car smell with a lot more leather and glue in it than normal. Ecological tanning processes do mean that the leather is less pungent than it used to be, however.