Most of the time all you could hear was the luxuriant purr of silky smooth V8 and V12 engines. But every now and then a little whimper came from the general direction of a group of timber and furniture trade journalists touring the Jaguar factory in Coventry.
The wide-eyed reporters just could not suppress the involuntary expressions of appreciation. The sight of all of all those sleek ‘big cats’ lined up ready to be shipped around the world, their gleaming curves carefully wrapped in protective transit packaging, was just too much to handle.
Of course, it is the sinuous contours of the Jaguar that initially turn heads – and these have now been highly successfully translated from the exclusive XJ saloon and XK sports tourer models, to the more affordable S-type. But the resurgent success of the marque is also down to the fact that the beauty is far more than skin deep – it extends, of course, to performance and the interiors as well.
In fact, the latter, or more precisely the copious amounts of burnished veneer adorning the dash, doors and console of every model, were the real focus of the journalists’ visit to the Coventry site.
The event was organised by Dustraction, which has just supplied its third and fourth heavy-duty extraction systems to the Browns Lane factory to cope with a massive increase in output of veneered components.
Now owned by Ford, Jaguar’s strategy is to sell into a wider market, and next year this will be carried forward with the launch of the X-type, an entry-level model to rival the BMW 3 series, priced someway beneath the S-Type. At the same time the company is determined that adding a more modestly priced model to its line up will not compromise its reputation for looks and quality – hence massive recent investment in its veneer components facility to double production capacity to 200,000 car sets a year.
The wood mills at Browns Lane are already one of the biggest veneer and timber processing sites in the UK- with a workforce of 260 – and they are every bit as hi-tech as the rest of the car plant. They’re also just as clean, with the Dustraction system hoovering up every last fleck of veneer and wood residue.
‘Keeping the place neat and tidy is part of the overall approach on quality, but also down to Jaguar and Ford’s environmental and health and safety rules,’ said wood mills superintendent Terry Williams.
Jaguar uses American white poplar as its under veneer, with Californian walnut and pre-stained Canadian bird’s-eye maple as the surface. Most of it is rotary cut.
‘We do requests for bespoke interiors and special veneers, but we always warn customers against extreme variations. Going for a pink car with a yellow interior is going to cost you a lot more and seriously dent the resale value,’ said Mr Williams.
Jaguar buys all its veneers in London and Milan, and is currently using 4,000m² of walnut and 6,000m² of maple a month.
‘The XK sports range generally have eight pieces of veneer trim, and the other models between 16 and 21. Each sheet is mirror or bookmatched and every piece is numbered so every car has co-ordinating components,’ said Mr Williams.
The cutting room is very tightly monitored, with the craftsmen paid on yield.
‘We achieve an average utilisation factor of 42%. To a lay person that might sound quite a lot of waste, but it’s better than the veneer processing industry average,’ he said.
Cutting is with a mixture of traditional guillotines and two recently installed laser cutters.
‘The lasers were a good investment, but, for flexibility we plan to carry on with both kinds of cutting,’ said Mr Williams.
The veneer pieces are bonded onto either lightweight aluminium or magnesium using phenol and melamine impregnated glue paper, and Jaguar has 21 Italpresse presses for the job, one of the biggest concentrations of such machines anywhere.
Mr Williams said: ‘The bonding is done at 140O to 150OC and very high pressure. This enables us to form the material into 4mm apertures without cracking. It also gives an extremely stable result – it has to as we test cars around the world, from northern Finland to Tierra del Fuego. They have to withstand temperatures from under -40O to over 100OC, plus very high humidity.’
Before coating with an unsaturated polyester lacquer, which is given two to three days to harden, some of the components have the Jaguar brand inlaid using laser cutting and a specially developed ultra fine brass foil.
Undoubtedly the part of the production line which gets most attention from visitors are the three enclosed robotised sanding cells, which were set up at a combined cost of £750,000. Each of these has a Kuka robot and three SHL sanders. The former picks up each component – with some dash trims up to 1m long – and takes them to each sander in turn.
Mr Williams said: ‘The cells take seven minutes to sand each component, compared to an hour by hand. Every job is completely uniform as well, which isn’t possible by hand. If you’ve been manually sanding a piece for an hour, the second and third pieces are not going to be as good.’
Jaguar has recently spent £3.5m on its current wood processing operation and in the latest phase to gear up for the launch of the X-type, it is investing a further £6.4m.
A number of buildings at Browns Lane have been given over to the new facility. Much of it is still awaiting the arrival of new plant, but some key technology has already been installed, including new controlled-environment automated spray booths, a large-scale Autopulit flat-bed sander and the two new 60,000cfm Cattinair cyclo filter extractor systems from Dustraction.
‘When everything is in place, we will have one of the best plants of its type in Europe. We will also be increasing our workforce to between 400 and 450,’ said Mr Williams.
In the longer term, Jaguar may also consider extending its activities into solid wood component production, for gear stick knobs and, possibly steering wheels, which it currently imports ready-made from Italy.
Mr Williams said: ‘Air-bag restraint systems now enable wood steering wheels to comply with the latest safety regs and demand is booming. In fact when Mercedes made them an option, they anticipted a 25% take-up rate from customers. It’s turned out to be 75% and they’re battling to meet demand. So if anyone out there is considering doing something new in timber, steering wheel production would probably be a very good niche at the moment!’
The only new development at Browns Lane which Jaguar would not show the assembled journalists was the object of a large chunk of the latest veneer processing investment, the new X-type itself. Mr Williams, however, assured them that it, too, would have the looks, inside and out, to get the press and consumers swooning in the aisles at next year’s motor shows.
