Original ECD Rover Dome

ECD started in a simple 900 sq ft space when it was founded vin 2013. The small office space included a small garage style space in the rear where our first team members worked on the classic defender restorations. As our team, goals, and customizations grew, so did our need for more space. After a few years in the same industrial park, ECD had gone from taking up one office to residing in over 10 of the park’s units, across two different buildings. By 2020, our latest goals and market demands meant we needed to consider making even bigger moves.

Our founders sat down with our Production Manager to make a plan for a bigger space – a much bigger space. After much scouting in the area, we found a lot that had planned a building that could just be large enough for ECD’s latest production goals. As our bay managers, founders, contractors, and builders met for months, the plan for ECD’s new Rover Dome was coming together. In 2021, we announced our plans to move into a new 100,000 sq ft facility.

Why a New Facility?

In true ECD fashion, it is in our nature to meet the demand in the restoration defender market and to be the best at doing so. Our new facility was procured with the goal of having the ability to produce 100 vehicles in a year and that required as much space as we could manage. Everything about our new building was being built to match those needs and more in case we needed to change anything or needed extra space for housing potentially finished vehicles as they wait for shipping. As the workload grew,  so did our team and supplies, which also require space.

Rover Dome 2.0 

The Rover Dome starts with our Sales Office, which is now a space dedicated to showing clients where their journey begins. Attached to our Sales office is our Design Studio, which houses a comfy couch and lounge area, the perfect creative environment for designing a custom Defender with a few restored defenders parked inside to admire along the way. Next up is our Tear Down Bay, which is almost three times the size of our last tear down area and includes special stations to allow our techs to dismantle the original defenders safely and carefully. 

Close by is our new Warehouse, which now houses over eight million parts at any given time and has a new level of planning and organization. Our main assembly line is where every custom defender starts its new journey and where it will spend its next few days being brought back to life. 2 lines (structured horizontally) make up 10 “bays” to maximize the space, the North line, the South Line. The North Line is where you can see all of our freshly restored chassis being fitted for their new modern engines. The South Line shows the vehicles truly coming together, with their main components being restored from other areas in the building. Cosmetics add on the final touches as the vehicles sit in the main assembly bays.

Outside of our main technical bays, are still more spaces dedicated to each level of ECD customization. In the Sub Cosmetics space, the main components of each custom Defender are repaired and made new, this is also where we complete custom features for each vehicle. Next to this office is the Upholstery space, where all of our vehicle’s upholstered parts, seats, dashboards, consoles, are wrapped and customized in the client’s design of choice. After final assembly, each vehicle will find its way back into the main technical building for its final stop in the QC line. Here, each build is checked and checked again for every aspect of quality that is standard at ECD. 

Outside of our main technical bays is The Lab where our new state-of-the-art paint facility is housed. The Lab is where one can always see a custom selected color being painted onto any number of parts. 

Other spaces in the new Rover Dome include our dedicated purchasing office, our main office, and our creative department. The Purchasing office is where those eight million parts are ordered and kept track of. The Main office consists of all of the Rover Dome admins and our Concierge team, who all keep us running like a well oiled machine. Our creative department is where you can see our marketing team who create our content, record our vehicles for clients and social media, and develop new programs to give the best digital display of our custom vehicles as possible. 

While the scale has always been hard to imagine, you can visit our YouTube or Twitch channels to see a constant stream of the Rover Dome in action. If that doesn’t satisfy your fancy, feel free to call or email the office at our main lines and schedule yourself a tour of the Largest Defender Restoration Facility in the World! If you’re ready to fly out to build your custom defender, email us at [email protected].