Foreign Flashback:Nissan 180SX Manufacturing in Japan

I thought this video was worth posting because I am having a very difficult time finding automotive manufacturing content from Japanese companies. I know many auto firms cooperate with Japanese companies, but it appears they keep their information out of the public arena. From what I have seen, Europeans seem to be the least concerned with letting insiders into their plants and the Japanese seem the be the most elusive.

This video is completely in Japanese and is well over 10 years old, but it is still interesting to see how the Nissan 180SX (S13 chassis) was manufactured. Production for the car began in 1989 and ended in 1998. If I had to guess, this video is probably from the early 90's. As you watch the video note that virtually everything is performed manually by the production workers including welding and glue application/window placement.

Flashback: 1954 Smith & Wesson Plant Tour

Raw Steel to Smith & Wesson - The Story of Revolver Making

Thanks to a forum member over at the Smith & Wesson Forums, here is a vintage plant tour of the Smith & Wesson plant circa 1954. The manufacturing operation is nearly entirely vertically integrated as can be seen by the raw steel and raw walnut blank inventory for grips; in fact the only "outsourced components" I can think of at the moment may be the wax paper and paper shipping box! The article claims there are over 2000 operations and 500 inspections, and I believe the claim since virtually everything for the revolver was made onsite. Additionally, since this tour is so old every operation was pretty much a manual job. The craftsmanship of the operators was essential to making a quality product, and the hand fitting required made the task closer to an art rather than just assembly.


Some of the interesting highlights of the tour are as follows:
Image 5: The in-house Screw machine department
Image 29: Father and son Blaisdell team; You sure don't see anything even close to this anymore!
*Father's age: 75 with 52 years of S&W service
*Son's age: 41 with 16 years of S&W service
Images 36 & 42: Hand serialized parts (and assembly numbers for internal tracking)
Images 49 & 50: S&W makes its own tools/jigs/fixtures/gauges
Image 59: Manual recording of revolver shipments. To this day you can still request a factory letter for $30 from S&W Historian Roy Jinks that will tell you your revolver's original configuration, date of shipment, and where the gun was shipped to.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Flashback tour, and I hope you do as well. Things have changed considerably over the last 53 years, and it is always interesting to look back to see how a pre-computer, pre-CNC maching, etc. factory operated.

If you have any magazines, links, etc. to other old plant tours I would love to share the information with everyone! Now, on to the S&W tour....