IN PICTURES: 'Mindblowing' tour around Jaguar Land Rover's £500m engine factory

That was the verdict of former businessmen as they were wowed by the hi-tech wizardry of Jaguar Land Rover's new engine making complex.

The members of Cannock Chase Probus Club were one of the first outside groups to go on a behind the scenes tour of the £500 million JLR Engine Manufacturing Centre off the M54 at the i54 site, near Wolverhampton.

Former aircraft engineering department manager Geoff Gregg, who organised the visit for the 41-year-old club, was amazed to see just how efficient and modern the giant state-of-the-art manufacturing complex was.

"The committee asked me to organise something interesting and when this came up I snapped it up," he said.

"The tour was excellent and a totally different manufacturing experience for us."

Retired sales director Steve Pegler described the EMC as "fabulous" and said JLR was at the forefront of motor industry innovation.

"When the Japanese came in Ford were the big people, but Toyota and Nissan overtook them. They were impressive, but this is a step further.

"The investment that has gone in to it is amazing and to think they are going to increase it by 50 per cent is great. It is just what was needed for the West Midlands.

"The technology most impressed me and it was illuminating to see how they go about assembling the engines and testing each part all the way along the line. There can't be many engines that get such attention.

"The cleanliness also impressed me. It was bit like CSI the way they operate inside the assembly shop," said Mr Pegler, who drives a Jaguar XF Sport

Club secretary Peter Wood said more of the members of 58-strong Probus, which meets fortnightly on Mondays in Cannock Conservative Club, might now want to go on a follow up tour.

"It was an excellent experience and the EMC is a marvellous facility. I was impressed with just how clean it is inside," said Mr Wood, who worked as a regional sales manager for a packaging company.

"The number of robots that they use was quite mind blowing. To think only 50 people work in that machine shop was fantastic.

"I would thoroughly recommend these tours to other clubs," he added.

JLR has only recently added tours of the EMC - opened by Her Majesty The Queen on Ocrtober 30, 2014 - to its Jaguar Land Rover Experience programme alongside tours of its car manufacturing plants at Castle Bromwich, Solihull and Halewood.

Tour guide Gareth Slater , who led one of the two nine-strong groups from Cannock Chase Probus around the 775,000 sq ft factory, said he was impressed by just how interested the group, which included members up to 85-years-old, were in finding out everything they could.

"They had loads of questions for us, some which we have never been asked before," said Gareth.

"Our tours are intended to showcase the future of JLR and the state-of-the-art processes we use and how efficient and sustainable the EMC is," he explained.

Each tour for a maximum of nine takes about two hours to go around the marked walkways in the machine and assembly halls which have 1.1km of conveyors.

Everyone has to be equipped with high visibility jackets and headphones to ensure they can hear the guide over the noise in the highly-automated machine hall, which use 2,500 precision tools and has a range of 173 machines and whizzing robots that are in constant action processing the engine blocks, cylinder heads and crankshafts.

Only 50 people are at work at one time in the giant hall - the size of four-and-a-half football pitches - out of the entire workforce of 1,400 at the EMC.

The Cannock group was impressed to hear that a completed lightweight and fuel efficient Ingenium diesel or petrol engine is delivered every 38 seconds and to find out about the latest technology that is used.

When the plant is at full capacity it will produce 400,000 engines a year

*Places on the JLR Experience tours can be booked through the website at https://shop.landrover.co.uk/driving-experiences/behind-the-scenes/manufacturing-tour-wolverhampton

They cost £39 per person and are offered on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9am and 1pm.

Tours can be tailored to meet the requirements and interests of each group.