Solihull Gold Experience, thoughts?
Discussion
Depends what you want from a day...
If you like to see the nuts & bolts of how the cars are put together, British manufacturing at its best, blah, blah... and then a taster of what the cars can actually do; Yep, that's what you want.
However, if you want to drive and learn how to handle a Landy properly, you want to do a full day driving experience at Eastnor.
M
If you like to see the nuts & bolts of how the cars are put together, British manufacturing at its best, blah, blah... and then a taster of what the cars can actually do; Yep, that's what you want.
However, if you want to drive and learn how to handle a Landy properly, you want to do a full day driving experience at Eastnor.
M
I've done both Eastnor and the Solihull Gold experience.
If, like me, you've never really seen inside a major manufacturing plant before and you have an interest in engineering then you will find the factory tour fascinating. Highlights of the tour for me were the panel press machine (basically the size of a 3-bed semi jumping up and down every 10seconds, the robots and how they are choreographed to miss each other by millimeters, and then to also see the contrast of how the Defender is still made by hand. Although I suspect the Defender plant is now closed? Overall the sheer scale of Solihull is very impressive.
I did all three off road tracks at Solihull. Luckily the day we went it was raining really hard so the Jungle track had turned into a river! We were nearly at the point where they couldn't take the defender out because the water had got that deep! The other tracks there are man made but test the cars to their extreme. The 'elephant footprints' in a Defender are great fun.
As purely off road experience I found Eastnor more enjoyable than Solihull as its set in natural landscape an they have hundreds on acres to play around on. Eastnor also has areas of man made obstacles to show you what the cars are capable of. Make sure you have a go at the 45deg (IIRC) decent!
The instructors that work at these experience centres are also very good. At Eastnor they are also double the test drivers for putting prototypes through their paces. While we were there we saw the new Sport all camouflaged doing some deep water testing. We also questioned our instructor on the Defenders replacement and although he was sworn to secrecy he did say that some Discovery mules had been at Eastnor not so long ago... but they could have been for the new Disco Sport?
Land Rover also use Eastnor to test other manufactures off roaders to see what the competition is like. They had great joy in telling us that when testing the latest Porsche Cayenne they managed to get it stuck!
Either way they are both great days out. Wherever you go make sure you do the off roading in a Defender. The modern Sports / Vogues are hugely impressive but as an experience you cannot get more fun and involved than a Defender.
Hence ever since I have yearned to own one!
Lastly, I found that Eastnor especially has about a 3-4 month waiting list so I'd get in quickly so you can hopefully go on a winters day when the ground is all wet and muddy.
Hope that helps.
If, like me, you've never really seen inside a major manufacturing plant before and you have an interest in engineering then you will find the factory tour fascinating. Highlights of the tour for me were the panel press machine (basically the size of a 3-bed semi jumping up and down every 10seconds, the robots and how they are choreographed to miss each other by millimeters, and then to also see the contrast of how the Defender is still made by hand. Although I suspect the Defender plant is now closed? Overall the sheer scale of Solihull is very impressive.
I did all three off road tracks at Solihull. Luckily the day we went it was raining really hard so the Jungle track had turned into a river! We were nearly at the point where they couldn't take the defender out because the water had got that deep! The other tracks there are man made but test the cars to their extreme. The 'elephant footprints' in a Defender are great fun.
As purely off road experience I found Eastnor more enjoyable than Solihull as its set in natural landscape an they have hundreds on acres to play around on. Eastnor also has areas of man made obstacles to show you what the cars are capable of. Make sure you have a go at the 45deg (IIRC) decent!
The instructors that work at these experience centres are also very good. At Eastnor they are also double the test drivers for putting prototypes through their paces. While we were there we saw the new Sport all camouflaged doing some deep water testing. We also questioned our instructor on the Defenders replacement and although he was sworn to secrecy he did say that some Discovery mules had been at Eastnor not so long ago... but they could have been for the new Disco Sport?
Land Rover also use Eastnor to test other manufactures off roaders to see what the competition is like. They had great joy in telling us that when testing the latest Porsche Cayenne they managed to get it stuck!
Either way they are both great days out. Wherever you go make sure you do the off roading in a Defender. The modern Sports / Vogues are hugely impressive but as an experience you cannot get more fun and involved than a Defender.
Hence ever since I have yearned to own one!
Lastly, I found that Eastnor especially has about a 3-4 month waiting list so I'd get in quickly so you can hopefully go on a winters day when the ground is all wet and muddy.
Hope that helps.
Edited by Rochester TVR on Friday 8th August 09:35
Edited by Rochester TVR on Friday 8th August 09:50
Rochester TVR said:
Lastly, I found that Eastnor especially has about a 3-4 month waiting list so I'd get in quickly so you can hopefully go on a winters day when the ground is all wet and muddy.
Hope that helps.
The best time to visit Eastnor, is during the first rain after a long dry summer... Hope that helps.
M
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