Here at Jalopnik some of our best ideas and most fun story angles stem from conversations that we have in Slack while slacking off, and that’s especially true when we’re deciding what our question of the day should be. Last week when discussing Ford’s new Carhartt collaboration the topic turned to making jokes about working at auto factories, which then turned into a real discussion about the factories we’d want to work in, and now I’m posing that topic to our beloved readers. So, reader, I ask you: If you were pivoting to a new career in automobile manufacturing, which automaker’s factory would you want to work in?
I’m going to allow for some leeway here and say that not only can you either be broad or talk about a super-specific job or role, I’m also gonna say it’s totally fine if you want to hop in a time machine and go back to a factory that doesn’t exist anymore, or to an automaker at a specific point in time. Have some fun.
My picks
My brain immediately went to the factory in Affalterbach, Germany, where Mercedes-AMG hand-builds the M139 four-cylinder engines for cars like the CLA45, SL43 and C63. You might think I’d rather be working on AMG’s honkin’ V8s, but as I learned when I got a tour a few years ago, the facility for the smaller engine is vastly more modern and definitely the place to be. The relatively small room is clean, well-lit and extremely quiet — most of the workers have headphones in to jam out to music, but some work in silence. Each worker has their own workstation that autonomously follows them around to all the different sections, and they can fully complete a couple engines per day.
Sadly AMG is discontinuing that four-cylinder, though, and I think there is another factory I’d rather work in anyway: Bugatti’s. The French marque’s hypercars are hand-built in a super specialized facility in Molsheim, France, that’s able to produce a few dozen cars per year. Visually the Bugatti factory just looks like an awesome place to work, and it would surely be incredible to be surrounded by (and in charge of) such advanced machinery.
But what about you? Which automaker’s factory would you want to work in? Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll round up my favorite answers later this week.
