Ginetta opened the doors to their factory on Saturday the 26th of Feb in aid of the Save Sam’s Spine charity, with the aim to help raise money towards the £20,000 required for a life changing operation, with Ginetta Boss Lawrence Tomlinson pledging to match the total raised by the tour.

We were told to arrive at Ginetta for 11am and were pleasantly greeted by the sight of two of Ginetta’s road cars. The beautiful F400 Supercar and the road variant of the successful G40 with the F400’s engine running and door open allowing us to have a special glance inside the £95,000 machine (and of course giving the accelerator pedal a light tickling!) while the rest of the guests to arrive.

After everybody arrived we signed in and made an initial donation of £10 per person and were collected in the staff canteen and separated into two groups of around 30 and the tour commenced. I was in the first group of people and the first stop of the tour was the design office to see where the magic happens in regards to the design of the car. The first thing that stood out to me was the relaxed appearance with a pool table and table football available, Ginetta hire a team of five CAD designers who’s job it is to “build” the cars and components in the virtual environment, to the point where individual components from whole chassis’ right down to seemingly unimportant parts such as the boot hinges. We we’re given a talk about the CAD design stages and the whole philosophy to which Ginetta is based on, which is affordable quality racing in pure-bred machines in an effort to make motor racing more accessible to people who don’t have huge budgets of big teams.

They achieve this by designing certain parts to be universal such as the suspension upright (component that links the suspension on each wheel of the car and also the brake disk and wheel attach to) so that one type would be needed for all four corners of the car, which is different in road cars as you’d have a differently manufactured part for each wheel. The thinking behind this is that it allows certain components to be able to be mass produced, reducing costs and allowing Ginetta to retain these in stock for their customers as spares and it also allows for the inclusion in emphasis on other parts to the design such as safety. A great example of this is the G40 and G50/G55 chassis are 50x stiffer than what the FIA stipulate promoting a safe environment for the drivers taking on Ginetta cars.

The tour continued with the chassis theme onto the factory floor itself into the chassis shop where the steel tubing is welded by hand with an output of around 4 complete chassis a week. The actual tubing is made by a contractor out of 3 different grades of seamlessly cast steel which is pre-bent, laser cut and numbered to speed up the actual construction of the chassis, allows for damaged sections to be easily replaced and reduces cost without affecting quality, it was interesting to see the build charts on the wall showing the different steps in the manufacturing process.

After a chassis has been welded together it is moved to a rotating jig that can give access to the full 360 degrees to the chassis allowing stringent quality control checks as well as access to welds in awkward positions. The chassis is then sent to a contractor for powder coating in matte black before the rest of the build commences on the build line.

The build line was the next part of the tour with the G40 chassis in various stages of build lined up on one side and G50/55 on the opposite side. Here all the other systems such as engine, cooling, suspension, brakes and bodywork are systematically added to the chassis which slowly starts to resemble a racing machine. On the tour we we’re lucky enough to get a sneaky preview of the brand new G55 car ahead of its official press launch at Silverstone today (Monday 28th) and I am happy to report the snippets of pictures that have filtered there way onto various social networking outlets by Ginetta themselves give a very accurate representation to the aesthetic appeal to the car, coupled with the engineering given to the car we are in for a treat when the lights go out for the first time this year!

The main part of the tour concluded on with the road car division, currently Ginetta produce road variants of the G40 and G50 as well as their own Supercar – the F400. The build set up seemed quite similar to the race cars with around six F400′s in various states of build. A notable appearance this car has made was in the Isle on Mann with Australian Top Gear, this car was present at the factory and was in a state of undress. Ginetta bought the plans for the F400 from the company Farbio, as it struggled to make the manufacture of the car affordable and competitively priced. With such a huge price tag, high levels of performance, luxury interior and the abuse some road cars have to endure Ginetta aren’t happy to let one go until it’s absolutely perfect.

After the two groups merged we we’re ushered outside for an audio and visual treat. A Ginetta G50 burning up a set of tyres doing donuts! In fact the driver of the car was that enthusiastic he claimed to have burned the clutch out after the car stopped. Ginetta didn’t stop there with the motorsport themed treats! After we went back into the factory they started up the Team LNT Panoz Esperante GT2 car that won in class at 24 Heure Du Mans in 2006 at the hands of a team headed by the Ginetta boss himself, Lawrence Tomlinson.

The day was rounded off with light refreshments and the raffle for passenger rides in the F400 and G40 road cars and the chance for extra donations toward s the Save Sam’s Spine charity. I would like to take the time to thank Ginetta for arranging such a rare opportunity and wish Sam Rhodes all the best with raising money for his operation.

More photo’s from the day can be found here.

Photo Credit: Pete Mainey (www.psmmotorsportimages.co.uk)

Craig is our Ginetta GT Supercup correspondant. You can contact craig at craig@btcccrazy.co.uk or on his twitter account @craigbjones1.