Prodrive Open Day 2007

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More than 2000 people visited Prodrive on July 29 and 30, helping to raise more than ?50,000 for Oxford Children?s Hospital.

Visitors were treated to service demonstrations on Petter Solberg’s Impreza World Rally Car three times a day, with the service crew on Sunday managing to change the gearbox in a record 9 min 20 sec. The daily auctions of dozens of pieces of Prodrive memorabilia, which included signed Solberg overalls and boots; limited edition prints; and even the union flags, which flew outside Prodrive’s main building, raised nearly £7000.

All the workshops were opened up with staff on hand to answer questions. Visitors could get a first hand look at how we build WRC engines and gearboxes; how the Aston Martin DBR9, DBRS9 and Subaru rally cars are assembled; what makes carbon composite components so light; and just how many parts there are in a WRC bodyshell.

There were a couple of competitions in the workshops. One was to guess the weight of a carbon rally lightpod. For those interested, the actual weight was 1235 grams. Guesses ranged from 53g to 1960g and the eventual winner was Brian Eagle.

There was also a competition to assemble the exhaust system on an Aston Martin DBR9 engine. Jay Copecaid did the quickest time, just 48 secs, and we are currently offering him a job!

Prodrive chairman, David Richards, signed copies of the book, Driven Man, and a variety of team merchandise was sold at specially discounted prices just for the two days, with all the proceeds going to the charity.

Everyone at Prodrive would like to thank all those who attended the days for their support and for helping to raise so much money for the Oxford Children’s Hospital. Apologies to those who wanted to come, but were unable to, due to a limit on numbers. After the success of the weekend, we are looking at making this a regular event.

Images from the day will soon be uploaded in to the photolibrary on this website. High resolution images will soon be available at the following location ftp.prodrive.com Username: openday Password: pictures.