Renault’s New Trafic & the Eiffel Tower

As production costs around the world vary, global OEMs are shifting where they build products, often at the expense of long-time production sites where, essentially due to labor costs, things have become non-competitive. This is particularly the case in Western Europe.

They’ve installed 187 new robots in Sandouville to put 5,000 spot welds on the body of the New Trafic

So it is interesting to note that the Renault Sandouville plant, which is celebrating its 50^th anniversary, which had been a passenger vehicle plant (it builds the Laguna and the Espace), has a product added to it, the New Trafic and Opel/Vauxhall Vivaro high-roof version light commercial vehicles.

The Trafic, of which Renault has sold more than 1.6-million since it was introduced in 1980, is, according to the company, available in 270 body versions and more than 100 colors (which sounds like a logistical nightmare).

One interesting factoid regarding the preparation for building the New Trafic in Sandouville: for the press tooling, 5,000 metric tons (or 5,512.5 tons) of cast iron were used, which Renault says is three quarters of the weight of the Eiffel Tower’s metal frame.

That’s a lot of die sets.