M3 are built by hand?

[Frozen Black Panther]

are they all built by hand???

[Crazy Bimmer]

I believe just the engines are.

[piloto]

Built on the same line as the rest of the 3 series. Now, some people may think that's a bad thing, as hand-built sounds more exlusive, but as someone who works in manufacturing, I think it's a good thing.

Basically, with a moving assembly line, you have stationary workers and the product moves from one station to another, as each station adds value. The bottom line is that each work does the same set of tasks over and over and over again, constantly improving their process along the way. This in turn increases quality, productivity, while driving down cost.

The other adavantage is parts are standardized from one M3 to another. Nothing is filed, reamed, sanded to "make it fit," that so often happens on hand-built cars.

As it is, you have enough variability in the production process, hence why some cars haev had problems, whereas others haven't. Hand-building the car would only add more variability, which is what you should be eliminating in any production process.

[MasterDank]

He said hand built not custom one off... Hand built refers to the assembly process not manufacturing of parts. They are put together by robots/machines

So the motor would be put together by hand not forged by hand

[Krozi]

I am the chief builder for BMW. I build every single M3 one by one in my garage...no big deal...

[kaykay]

The engines are built by hand.

Here's Part I of III on how they build BMW's, in German, but a great video. Watch all three parts!

[piloto]

Originally Posted by MasterDank

He said hand built not custom one off... Hand built refers to the assembly process not manufacturing of parts. They are put together by robots/machines

So the motor would be put together by hand not forged by hand

Sorry, buy you're incorrect. Hand built means it's built by a single person or a team or persons at one station, as opposed to being built on an assembly line. All factories still use humans to some extent. Robots are used for certain tasks, such as welding and installing windshields. There's still a lot of parts assembled by human hands. However, that's not what hand built refers to in the industry. Hand built it how Rolly Royve builds their cars. How the Murcielago is built as opposed to how the Gallardo is built (moving assembly line).

[skywalker562]

nice

[sheepboy]

Well, hands control the robots, so I guess you can say they are built by hand ;-)

[AMPowerJ]

Originally Posted by sheepboy

Well, hands control the robots, so I guess you can say they are built by hand ;-)

Hands don't control the robots. Millions of lines of computer code control the robots.

[sor]

What controls the code (i'd be surprised if it were millions of lines)?

[Chest Rockwell]

God made man

Man made robots

Robots and man made the M3

You can see by that flow chart that God made my M3

[sor]

That explains a lot.

[duk]

i like hands

[audioMeth]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

You can see by that flow chart that God made my M3

[henryyxyu]

i dunno 'bout yaw but mah M3 is built by hand. the body is forged from exotic space rocks harvested by NASA themselves. the wheels are made of a specially engineered alloy thats even more lightweight than carbon fiber. hell, it even has a flux capacitator and travels back in time . the engine runs on unicorn blood and the kidney grills are made from the horns of the unicorn o.o (getting too far there, i'll stop )

They're assembled by hand on the normal 3 series assembly line, like everyone already mentioned before

[JCtx]

Only a handful of cars are truly made by hand, and they cost many times more than our 'lowly' M3s . What is made by hand more often are ENGINES. AMG engines are made by hand, just like LS7/9s (Z06/ZR1 engines). That means ONE person assembles each engine from start to finish (with help from machines/tools, of course), and usually attaches a plaque with his name somewhere on the engine. ALL engines are mostly built by hand, but rather than by one person, they're built in an assembly line, where each person does one step, just like the rest of the car. Hope this helps understand the difference.

As far as I know, the S65 is not built by hand, but it's also not built with the rest of the engines, so I think BMW refers to that as being 'partially built by hand' . Basically M engines are built in a different location, but they're built in an assembly line (albeit a smaller one), so I wouldn't even say 'partially', but you know how manufacturers love to come up with marketing crap like that. It'd be nice if somebody with knowledge of this could chime in with details .

[duk]

is then engine really made by hand??

[joseph328]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

God made man

Man made robots

Robots and man made the M3

You can see by that flow chart that God made my M3

Whoah wait ... if there is no God?
There is no M3?

[MJC///M3]

Originally Posted by Laszlo

Skynet builds M3s.

complete with a neural net processor...a learning computer....

[mdosu]

Aside from actual evidence of the assembly line, if you think about it, on a pure numbers stand point there's no way M3's are built by hand. Thousands are built each year, and there's virtually zero customization (IE, we have to buy packages). I agree certain customization could be done, but mostly it's through packages.

Even the AMG engines are not "built from hand", even though they claim it is. They may have a person assemble more parts per engine than the average assembly line, but more or less, it's still an assembly line. I can't find the video of this, but Top Gear once made fun of the AMG "bulit by hand" engine stamp, saying it accounted for 1 mechanic building a ridicoulous amounts of engines in 250 business days a year, or literally thousands and thousands of mechanics needed to build the required number of AMG engines.

[FStop7]

I think hand building engines is a little overrated. Robots are going to be more precise.