Mazda Museum, Hiroshima, Japan, October 29, 2013

If you are in Hiroshima this is something to try out. The biggest company in the town of Hiroshima is the Mazda Motor Corporation. They have their main office at Fuchu a few km outside of the city centre. From there a private bus takes you to the museum located within the production facility (that, by the way, is huge!). The museum contains many of the old cars, current production techniques and future concepts, but still there is a large section on rotary engines although they are discontinued entirely. There were a lot new stuff about the CX-5 in the museum (I was there last time in the spring of 2012) with all sorts of design issue and production techniques. Very good indeed. The highlight of the tour was to see the production line (no photographing allowed) and we saw Mazda 2 and MX-5 being build. From where we could see from, they were laying the carpets in the cars. Thereafter there were a station for inserting the dashboard (done by hand) and gluing on windscreens (done by robots). Such a car production line is a very fascinating thing to watch and it is a logistical marvel. We also saw the private port where the cars are loaded onto large ships. There were ship at anchor a few kilometers out in the bay and cars ready to be loaded on the pier. (Again, no photographing allowed) The video contains stills and HD video. A tour has to be booked at the Mazda museum in advance. You can check out the Mazda museum website: http://www.mazda.com/mazdaspirit/museum/ If you want to see my movie from 2012 on the Mazda museum please click on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpkdRjxh28w