Featured Factory Tour At Last!

Well after four postponements today is the BIG day! Along with three friends it's my Triumph Factory Tour day!
We're booked in for 1:30pm and apparently it takes around 1 1/2 hours. I'll post details and a report in due course.

 

Hi guys, didn't get home till late (ish) yesterday so didn't get round to posting my report, but here goes!

Our tour was scheduled for 1:30pm and we arrived about an hour early, and so had time for a cuppa in the cafe and a bloody awful bacon sandwich, followed by some time in the excellent museum where we saw some mouth-watering vintage bikes along with the original 'Bonneville' two wheel speed record holder and Guy Martin's Rocket Three speed attempt.

Then, bang on time, our factory tour began headed up by a guy called Pete who kitted us up with head sets so we could hear him OK and yellow vests.

And from that point on I'm very sorry to say it was downhill all the way. In all honesty the tour was a 1 1/2 hour walk around a vast empty space, interspaced with a few guys here and there doing a bit of this and a bit of that. There was a huge warehouse 'full' of empty racking, massive factory floor space where you could play football if you had one, and a couple of guys on fork trucks moving boxes around from here to there.

What we DID see was an area of CNC machines working flat out grinding crank shafts for, we were told, every Triumph throughout the world. We saw a few fellas spraying up tanks and side cases, and a computer printing area where plastic prototype parts are produced.

Towards the end of the tour we were led into a so called 'assembly' line which was static as the tea break bell had just gone off. Pete, our guide, said this was under preparation to build 20,000 bikes a year - Tigers, Bonnevilles and A.N. Other - but nothing at the moment.

Then we were shown a video of a Street Triple engine revving at 14,000 rpm, and that ladies and gentlemen was that.

In fairness Pete (who talked a very good and interesting talk) did say that the 'factory' was at the moment starved of parts to assemble because of the current shortages and also the ship which got stuck in the Suez Canal had caused chaos in the supply chain.

But all in all a bit of a disappointment. What I think we witnessed was the result of Triumph's decision to move all production to Thailand, followed by their subsequent U turn to produce three European best sellers at Hinkley. Sadly the last bit was still a project in the making and THAT was the static assembly line we saw. My theory is that all this is still policy in the making and Pete was reluctant to spill the beans. There WAS a lot of very expensive equipment around but just not much going on, and we were not shown the Research and Development department for obvious reasons.

I guess I enjoyed the day but it just wasn't what I was expecting.

Riggers.

 

Late night thought on this fellas. Take a look on Triumph's web site regards factory tours and what they say you're going to see at Hinkley. What they offer is not what we got. Do you reckon we should be in for a refund? The four of us spent 80 quid. on this and got a tour of emptyness.

 

Also fellas if you do agree I'd appreciate advice on going about it.