I wanted to find some automotive-related things to do while in Stuttgart, so, on a whim, I decided to email Porsche a couple weeks before my vacation, and to my surprise, they easily set me up with a tour of their Zuffenhausen factory(in English, too!)!! They emailed all the information to me directly, since there is zero info about Zuffenhausen tours on their website, … the email said not to park in the dealership, so I just found street parking about three blocks away.(There was an underground garage for the museum, but it seemed to be closed on Mondays). The meeting point for the tour group is in the museum lobby, and once there, they will take your cell phones and cameras from you — not surprising, but disappointing still. Only 8 people were in our tour group — a very comfortable size. Our tour guide, Jeff Salut, was a well-informed, long-time Porsche employee, and he led us through several areas of the factory, and even had some humorous anecdotes along the way. We saw the logistics area, where all the parts come in and are sent to the assembly line; the upholstery area, with all that super nice leather being cut up and sewn together; the engine assembly lines(both V8s and flat-6s); and, of course, the final assembly line. It was impressive that their single assembly line had the capacity to build four different models at the same time — Cayman, Boxster, current 997 Carrera and next-gen 991 Carrera(the Cayenne and Panamera are built in Leipzig). We got to walk right down through the factory, just feet away from the production line. We even got to see them working on a Carrera Cup Car off to the side(roll cage already built-in!). Didn’t really get to see any of the metal stamping, body welding, plastics or paint shop, though. According to our tour guide, they are going to be able to increase production to 200 Porsches in a day(2 shifts). A lot less than my old NUMMI factory could build, but Carreras and Corollas are quite different, haha! One hugely awesome thing — it was completely FREE!
