After seeing our story on the Audi mixed materials training at Sydney Automotive Paint & Equipment I was invited to the Vantage Automotive Centre of Excellence to have a look round and observe the Jaguar Land Rover Global aluminium steel welding recertification.
The company was founded back in 2001 to help manufacturers and dealers improve the technical knowledge of their teams.
The registered RTO has extremely impressive facilities in Lidcome, Sydney. As well as providing Subaru with its training centre, which I’ve visited before, there’s a large, state-of-the-art, segmented training workshop.
Vantage Automotive also supplies training facilities and undertakes dealer training for Jaguar Land Rover, VW, Volvo and Fiat Chrysler amongst others. Each brand has its own training area with classrooms for theory work and everything needed for practical work. The philosophy is that all students spend at least 70% of their course time on practical work.
The centre recently added an entire welding training section with four welding booths, one of which is soundproofed. It even has it's own 3D printer for training aids and its own print room to product training course books for students.
While the company has specialised in dealer and manufacturer training, mostly on the mechanical side, it has a great deal of expertise in house on body repair and is now looking to branch out and offer courses for upskilling body repairers.
You can check them out here and have a look at a video we made while we were there.