TROOP 226
TRI-CITIES CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
2008 Events
June 2008 Road Trip to see the 2008 Corvette being assembled at the GM Corvette Assembly Plant in Bowling Green, KY!! For $5.00 its one of the best tours you'll ever get for your money!!
We also toured the National Corvette Museum adjacent to the assembly plant!
Troop 226 scheduled a private tour of the GM Corvette Assembly Plant at 10:00 a.m. We were not allowed to have cameras, cell phones, etc so no pictures were taken. However, thanks to the great resources on the internet, we found the following pictures from inside the GM Assembly Plant taken in May 2008 courtesy of the following websites:
http://portcitycorvetteclub.com Port City Corvettes – Mobile, AL, www.corvetteblogger.com, and some pictures posted on Autoblog by Jonathon Ramsey.
The first evening of our adventure occurred in Lebanon, TN at the Sleep Inn and Suites
The next day we drove to Bowling Green, KY
These electronic displays show the time of day, the production goal, the actual production, and trend. You can see that on this day, they were 4 Corvettes behind the goal for production.
Bowling Green Assembly Plant Facts:
The plant is over one million square feet under roof, but is one of the smallest GM assembly plants.
The Bowling Green plant assembles about 150-180 Corvettes per day and 8-9 Cadillac XLRs per day. That equals roughly 35,000 Corvettes and 4,000 Cadillac XLRs per year.
1,376 parts arrive "just in time" from 387 outside suppliers.
Seventy-seven percent of the car is made in the USA and Canada.
Corvette and XLR body panels are of composites (i.e. fiberglass). However, the front and rear bumpers are urethane.
The Cadillac XLR is built on a much smaller, separate line from the Corvette. The Cadillac XLR has only 36 workstations that carefully assemble these beautiful cars. They share the same frame and both use fiberglass body panels.
The Corvette starts as a frame. From start to finish, each Corvette spends roughly 36 hours covering 7 miles of conveyor systems in the plant. We walked 1 mile to view the various workstations during the assembly process.
In the paint department, body panels spend ten hours covering two miles on a conveyor system.
Body panels receive three coats of paint: primer, color and clear coat.
The freshly painted body panels are then assembled on the frames along with many other components.
The engine, transmission, and front and rear suspension are also being assembled on a separate conveyor line.
Then the partially assembled body and frame are "married" to the drivetrain and suspension...and like most marriages, it is a beautiful thing!
The assembly process continues until a completed Corvette is finally sat on the ground and ready to drive.
The pictures of the National Corvette Museum were taken by Troop 226.
The pictures are self-explanatory, but one section of the museum that is notable is the Corvette Nursery... Option Code R8C is a $500 option, but what a way to take delivery of your new Corvette!!
