Step Back In Time And Tour The Mercedes Factory Building The First Ever S-Class

Yahoo

04-04-2025

People love saying that "they don't make them like they used to," with "them" referring to everything from breakfast cereals to aircraft. Now, you can step inside an old Mercedes factory to explore exactly how they did used to build them, with this particular "them" being the iconic W116 S-Class.
The W116 was produced by Mercedes between 1972 and 1980 at its Sindelfingen factory in Germany, which has about 100 years of history building cars for Mercedes-Benz. Back in the 1970s, Mercedes let a film crew onto the factory floor to see how it assembled its first S-Class, and the resulting film is a cacophony of manual labor, controversial fashion choices, and rudimentary car-building robots (since well upgraded) on the factory floor.
The film begins with a look into a few stages of the development of the W116. There are technical drawings showing the design of the car, clay models of the finished design, and footage of the W116's V8 engine undergoing tests on a dyno rig.
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Once the development of the car was complete, it was displayed at the Paris Motor Show back in fall 1972, where the W116 made its public debut. After that, Mercedes was ready to kick off mass production of the new flagship.
The first stage of the build for the car starts at the press shop, where enormous sheets of steel are cut down to size and stamped to form the body panels of the W116. Huge presses churn out fenders, wheel arches, and other panels that are essential for the cars. The steel chassis of the car is then assembled and the body panels are lined up to be welded into position.
At this point, the hood is attached up front and the doors are also bolted into place. All of the welds on the car are then smoothed over and the shell of the car is checked by Mercedes engineers.
Once it's signed off, the frame of the S-Class is dipped into a huge tank that's filled with a special liquid to help prevent the steel work from corroding over time. The underside of the car is also sprayed to treat the surfaces, before primer is applied to the bodywork and several layers of paint are sprayed on top.
Over the next few stages of production, workers crowd around each frame fitting the dashboard and interior, as well as the lining for the trunk of the car. The wiring is all woven into the car at this stage, and all manner of checks are carried out on the components as they are bolted into place.
Trim pieces on the exterior, headlights and taillights are the next to go in, before the gleaming Mercedes grille is fitted up front. Finally, the windows and chrome details are fitted to the car before it is handed off to the next department.
While all that is going on, another area of the plant assembles the transmissions and engines that, once complete, are joined together and dropped into place at the front of the S-Class. The axles and other mechanical components are installed, before the wheels can be fitted at each corner and the finished car is handed over to quality control for a full suit of checks.
The factory that all this is filmed at is still owned and operated by Mercedes-Benz, and it still builds the S-Class there to this day. The production lines have all been refined and updated over the years -- as has the S-Class itself -- so now the plant churns out more than 200,000 cars every year. At the time that this film was produced, the output was closer to 100,000 units per year.
If you want to head inside more old factories to see how things used to be done, head here to see how the weird three-engined DC-10 was built back in the 1960s.
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