Strange but serious question about factory stripes
 

Hello,

Maybe it's just my lack of knowladge when it comes to how cars are built in the factories, but it really surprised me when I found out that the factory installed stripes were not put on in the factory. I just asumed that it would be part of the factory line. One guy puts the motor in, the next guy puts the seats in, and then the other guy slaps on the stripes. Why isn't it done this way? Why spend the extra trouble of sending the car outside the factory to get it striped? I'm sure there's a real reason for doing it this way. Just out of curiosity, are stripes usually installed in-house for other cars?

There a lot of people building the cars, 100's if not 1000's work in the plant. The assembly can be over a mile long (not in straight line). I was watching Fox News today and there was a segment from the Grand River Assembly in Lansing Michigan where they build the Cadillac CTS. They showed the cars coming down the interior line and they were workers all over the cars which were spaced about 5 ft apart, guy installing console while another is installing some other trim while another it installing something else and so on. You could see about 5 cars on the line and there must have been 20 people working around them.

Because the plant is not set up to do this because stripes will be a small portion of total production. Very few other models get stripes, its not a normal production item. Its more cost effective to have an outside vendor do this instead of building another facility. It was the same way with the last generation cars. For instance the Trans Am WS6 got a special hood but the plant fixtures could paint or install the hood. So the car was shipped to ASC Global who painted and installed the hood, graphics and shipped the car back to St Therese.

Here watch this video of the Corvette assembly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YII-h21xJvw