Automotive test tracks are nothing new. Automakers have been putting vehicles through their paces in special locations since at least the 1920s.
But with globalization and more companies building vehicles in North America, the numbers of tracks has grown, with some of the tested vehicles destined for sale outside the U.S.
In addition to Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Volvo and Volkswagen are among those with U.S. and Canadian test sites.
GM opened its Milford Proving Ground in Michigan in 1924. It began on 1,125 acres, which included test tracks, durability, test hills and a straightaway. There were two buildings: Garage Building No. 1 and the Clubhouse.
There were 5.6 miles of roads, about one-quarter concrete and three-quarters gravel.
“Today the proving ground site has grown to nearly 4,000 acres, with 132 miles of test roads, 106 buildings and a staff numbering 5,000 for around-the-clock operations,” said GM spokesman Gerald Wilson. “Testing now is more exacting and rigorous than ever before and has begun to shift from road testing to lab testing to support the move to computer math simulation.”
GM maintains facilities for hot-weather testing in Mesa, Ariz.; cold-weather facilities in Kapuskasing, Ontario, and Kincheloe, Mich.; and brake testing in Pikes Peak, Colo.
Nissan chose Stanfield, Ariz., for warm-weather tests. The company has 5.7 miles of track on 3,000 acres of desert.
“Stanfield is the site for all corporate hot-weather testing,” said Fred Standish, Nissan spokesman in the U.S. The company has a facility in Okinawa, Japan, for testing with heat and humidity.
Standish said there is a cinderblock enclosure in Arizona with no roof in which a car is parked for perhaps a week. Then a test driver opens the vehicle, climbs in, turns it on and waits to record how long it takes the vehicle’s air conditioner to bring the interior to a comfortable temperature.
Same goes, he said, for the cold-weather testing of heaters. Nissan chose Bemidji, Minn, this year to ensure consistent cold weather. Pity the driver, he added.
Besides two Michigan proving grounds, Ford Motor Co. maintains a 3,840-acre Arizona test site 25 miles south of Kingman.
“This proving ground has an average elevation of 1,950 feet, while nearby mountains and valleys offer roads with altitudes that vary from 500 to 6,500 feet above sea level,” said Emily Foley, product development communications.
High summer temperatures, low humidity and many unique geographical conditions such as sandwashes and dense, dusty soils make Arizona ideal for performance and durability testing, she said.
The Michigan proving ground in Romeo is 3,880 acres with 50 miles of roads and two lakes. One, Fisher Lake, is approximately 37 acres and was formed by damming the north branch of the Clinton River. It is used for testing flotation-type military vehicles.
The proving ground in Dearborn features a test track in Ford’s Research and Engineering Center. Dearborn provides 24 miles of roadways on 360 acres. Its six roads are replicas of popular testing surfaces throughout the world, Foley said, including the Glen Eagles Road (Scotland) and a European brick road (Koln, Germany).
They may be built for Sweden, but Volvo cars need to sweat, too. Volvo opened its operations in the Phoenix area in 1975. After a track was built in 1984, the complete operation started in spring 1985. Foley said the area consists of 1,350 acres and the grounds have several high-tech features including an oval track, Route 66 track (a one-lane, 2.6-mile road track with left and right turns and speed limits of 15 to 45 m.p.h.), slopes, freezer trailers, wind barriers and soak sheds.
Toyota Technical Center’s Toyota Arizona Proving Grounds celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The 11,600-acre site northwest of Phoenix is the company’s international hot-weather test site. It does cold-weather tests on a northern Japanese island and in Timmins, Ontario, a 14-hour drive north of its plant in Cambridge.
In addition to dynamic vehicle testing, the company puts interior and exterior materials through what might seem cruel and unusual punishment by placing samples on open and enclosed racks with southern exposures. There they can soak in the frequent 115-degree days of a Phoenix summer.
“All [dynamic] tests are done with drivers,” said Joe Lochaby, manager of operations, Toyota Arizona Proving Grounds. “Technicians are our main drivers. For some durability tests we may use contract drivers.”
Toyota has special training to prepare drivers for primary through advanced skills. Advanced drivers do the ride-and-handling exercises designed to test the limits of vehicles, with things such as high-speed lane changes, he said.
Course consistency is critical to testing, Lochaby said. Surfaces must be exactly the same, meeting baseline measurements to eliminate variables, as tests are run and repeated for each vehicle.
Lochaby said a vehicle may be tested for two or three days to up to a year. Models for ’04 and ’05 now are being put through their paces. According to GM’s Wilson, every model gets tested every year, but carryovers aren’t tested as extensively.
There are objective tests in which vehicles are wired for noise/vibration/harshness, ride-and-handling and brakes data. There are subjective tests in which engineers drive vehicles and write down their impressions.
Honda determined the high desert of Southern California was best for its hot-weather testing.
And for those who have wondered why Honda television ads feature military jets, the Air Force is the automaker’s neighbor in the Mohave.
North of California City and not far from a graveyard for Air Force planes and an active base, the Honda Proving Center of California is bounded by a seven-mile high-banked oval.
The center also incorporates various road surface simulations and off-road approaches and descents, said Honda spokesman Andy Boyd in Detroit.
A 2.5-mile road course with off-camber turns and various elevations is used to test suspensions. The dedicated winding road course is designed to test vehicles “at-limit,” or just before they go out of control, he said.
“This is not a fun course to drive,” said Boyd. “There is lots of motorcycle testing on the road course.”
Safety testing facilities for crash tests are in Ohio, between Marysville and East Liberty, where Honda has plants. It backs up to the Honda Transportation Research Center, said Boyd. While Honda owns the facility, it is managed by Ohio State University and is used by other automakers.
“We have to schedule time there,” Boyd said. “The center also does work for the Big Three.”
Honda’s main safety testing facility is in Japan. Its work consists of car-to-car and car-to-pedestrian crash situations.
Repetition the key for these drivers
So you want to be a driver at an automotive testing facility?
How does repeating the same exercise in the same time frame over and over again sound?
Repetition, with as few variations as possible, is how cars and trucks are tested. And it helps to know a lot about automotive engineering and how components might be tweaked to improve their performance.
On its 4,500-acre site in East Liberty, Ohio, the Transportation Research Center has everything from a 7.5-mile high-speed test track and an eight-mile cross-country hilly course to a crash-test facility.
The center has 250 drivers, including full- and part-timers, and a staff of some 650.
“Our drivers are people from all walks of life,” said Dennis Grisez, project engineer. “Many test drivers in the past were race drivers. They didn’t have much engineering background.”
Now the trend is for engineers to do the driving, he said. That eliminates communications gaps. The drivers likely have a better understanding of the design and engineering of the components being tested.
Grisez, an electronics engineer, develops and teaches training programs for drivers, which include customers’ engineers. He works with drivers at the lowest of four skill levels, helping them, for example, get a feel for what a car is doing when it is pushed to its limits, such as when taking corners at high speeds.
Many customers ask TRC to provide drivers to evaluate vehicles up to five years before production.
Driving consistency is the backbone of many tests, Grisez said.
“If you are evaluating two sets of tires, you may need to do the same driving test with half-second time differences to get results that can be compared,” he said.
The Transportation Research Center, established in 1988, is owned by Honda and managed by Ohio State University.
“We have 800 customers worldwide,” said Teri Elliot, customer development manager. “They include the makers of motorcycles, cars and trucks and their suppliers.”
TRC’s impact center does crash testing for the federal government and automakers, she said.
