SHOWERS ONLY ON THE OUTSIDE

Back in the factory, Jean-Paul frets on the †inal assembly line. Unusually the 508 has frameless windows, so technicians check the glass aligns with the seals, before sending the car through a spray booth. It’s early 2018 and just 20 pilot cars are being produced per week. Soon Christoph Patois will show the quality report to the board, seeking the green light for series production.

Six months later, 200 cars a day will be assembled and the quality team will have completed four cycles of reliability tests. Then it’s all about 1000 employees piling kilometres onto 200 †inished cars. The quality programme is reaching the end of a long road – all told, prototypes will have racked up a staggering 2.5 million kilometres.