403 Production video - Only 8 minutes long

Dano

Dano

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Thanks to Alastair Inglis of Club Peugeot UK who passed this link onto club members.

Interesting to see they made their own nuts and brackets etc.

Must admit, I would not have wanted to work in the spray booth.


Enjoy.

Dano
 
well yes ,i wonder what the life expectancy of those guys spraying without masks ,and working around those huge presses without guards , the ute in the same production line as sedans ,i would have thought they would have gone through in batches ,also the bodys seem to be assembled in bare metal ,before spraying ,possibly some of the process left out in the movie ,pugs
 
It's embarrassing that they can produce a whole car before the shop foreman has had his morning coffee yet it takes years for a diehard to restore one..
 
Interesting video. A reminder of how solid the 403 body was. And so many quality testing procedures. Shows why the French built 403 could be delivered with a very low fault incidence.
 
59 Floride said:
It's embarrassing that they can produce a whole car before the shop foreman has had his morning coffee yet it takes years for a diehard to restore one..
Click to expand...

Touché
 
For those who want to start again the 403, 404 and R10 body jigs were not scrapped but stored at an engineering firm in West Heidelberg. You never know, they may still be gathering dust in a shed somewhere.
The only test driving a Heidelberg car got was out into the parking lot. Because the engines were assembled and test run in France they ran better during delivery than the Dandenong Holdens that often had to be tuned by delivery drivers on the roadside.
 
This video is a longer one that goes almost one hour. Now, if only we could go back in time and press out a few panels, etc.

 
Note the quality control present at all times. It wasn't just an advertising slogan. But how expensive the cars were in real terms - not many workers driving out of the plant in cars new or old. Old fashioned approach to the work force - good housing near the factory, public transport and a factory agreement with the unions. People started with Peugeot, went through the engineering school and had jobs for life.
 
In this travelogue of some young Englishmen crossing the Sahara in an old British military truck at the sunset of European Africa (1959) there is a shot at 22.24 of a 403 wagon travelling across the desert with them. Of course, what a perfect vehicle, so strong and capable, absolutely standard. We can see why crossing the Sahara was the way French cars were proved back to the 1920's and why it was a lure for French adventurers.
 
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Thanks for posting Russell.

Interesting travelogue. An amazing feat for its time. One that would be almost impossible to do today. Traversing some of those countries these days is just fraught with danger of a different kind. Political and social unrest on a vast scale.

Dan
 
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