BMW tour-June 21, 2011

There are not enough adjectives to tell you about the BMW tour. It was fabulous, interesting, remarkable, unbelievable, unique, amazing, fun, tiring. They make cars for both the US and overseas shipment. In fact, 70% of the cars are shipped overseas through the port of Charleston, SC. They have named some of the robots and talk about them like people. Our guide would say "Watch R181 put his hands down and pick up a welder!". Then the sparks would fly. She talked about the automated step when the drive train is put into the car as the body/power train marriage. They do some great things for their "associates". They employ 7500 people in this facility. The next largest facility is in Germany where 20,000 are employed. I just cannot describe what it was like to watch robots move those cars around and weld them and put the parts in the right place, flipping the car in all directions while performing their tasks. They move around all over the place, in the air, both sides of the aisle, in the top of the building. Every car is tested up to 100 mph in a single little building. They build 5000 cars a week here. I want one! I wanted one before we bought our Cute Red Vehicle, but as previously stated, they are not towable. Now I really want one!! But common sense says it will not work to try to pull one around with us. So, I'll put that on my bucket list. This was an incredible tour and I highly recommend it if you are ever in this area of Spartanburg, SC. Tomorrow we leave for a couple of days in Lexington, SC before moving on toward the coast of Georgia.