Did You Know this ?

[teamzr1]

GM owns one of the largest test tracks in the world for 100 years now which is the Milford Proving grounds in Mi

Interesting facts about GM’s top secret development site:

• What it cost: GM paid about $100,000 for the property in 1923. It has grown to occupy about 4,000 acres of land and has lakes, where employees can fish. It's teaming with wildlife and contains the highest point in Oakland County.
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• No "S" on the end: The full name of the site is the General Motors Milford Proving Ground. But like Meijer, Kroger or Ford Motor Co., Milford Proving Ground also falls victim to many Michiganders putting an “S” on the end of it that does not belong there, calling it the “proving grounds.” It is not plural.
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• Top secrets: There are secret labs with state-of-the-art virtual technology where engineers can drive on the moon and do the GMC Hummer EV's famous Crab Walk long before the vehicle ever did it on the road.
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• Like a city with services: The site, which operates 24/7 365 days a year, is self-contained, using its own wells for water; it has a wastewater treatment facility, and it employs certified firefighters, licensed EMTs, hazardous material's response, confined space rescue team and road patrol officers. It has a fully staffed medical department.
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• Why you won't get in: The site is heavily guarded because all of GM's prototypes of future cars are there, hidden from spy photographers either behind closed doors, under camouflage tape or for super top-secret projects tested only in the dark of night to shield it from drone photos.
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• Special driver licenses needed: The engineers who work at the grounds are trained to drive like professional race car drivers so that they can test vehicles to the limits. The level of license is based on the speed a driver is allowed to go. GM has about 81,000 salaried employees globally, but fewer than 100 have passed the driving tests to do the top-speed test-driving at the proving ground.
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• How many miles of tracks: There are 147 miles of test courses, including the Milford Road Course,
• a racetrack that mimics parts of the famous Nurburgring in Germany.
• Every kind of roadway: The road surfaces of GM's tracks vary from dirt roads, to hills, to bumpy concrete with purpose-made potholes, to six lanes of banked concrete on a 5-mile Circle Track, to a straightaway with no speed limit, to the speedway-ready 3-mile Milford Road Course.
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• What that asphalt is: The ground's "Black Lake" is a slab of black asphalt that in the sunlight gives the illusion that it is water. It is the size of 59 football fields and is one of the largest vehicle dynamics pads in the world, used for a variety of tests on various aspects of cars, such as vehicle handling.
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• Replica of Belgian road: One of the smaller test tracks that is no less intriguing is GM's Belgian Block. It is a 2-mile-long replica of the real brick road that ran from Antwerp to Brussels, which was discovered during World War I by U.S. soldiers.
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• Hollywood knows about it: Portions of the "Transformers 4" movie were filmed at the proving ground. The filming locations included the Oval Track and the North/South Straightaway course. The Oval Track was painted with road markings to transport it fictionally to Asia.
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• Where guardrails were born: The 130 miles of guardrails that line nearly every road on the proving ground reflect what you see along any major interstate. The rails were first developed at Milford Proving Ground, designed to absorb an impact and pull a car along the rail.
• Developing virtual technology: GM is investing millions in virtual technology to test the entire car's performance virtually before ever making a physical prototype and putting it on the road. Virtual technology can get new vehicles to market faster, saving millions of dollars in costs to build physical prototypes. One prototype of a car can cost $100,000.
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• The VDTA ("Vehicle Dynamics Test Area"), also known as "Black Lake", is a 67-acre (270,000 m2) pad of blacktop for vehicle dynamics testing. Waterfowl have been known to try to land on this "lake" of asphalt. At the ends of the VDTA are two semicircle tracks used for accelerating vehicles up to high speed before entering the pad. A controlled low-friction area made of ceramic tiles is on one side of the pad. Another area is coated with the asphalt sealant and can be watered down to produce a low friction surface.
• The Oval Track is a 3.8 miles (6.1 km) circuit
• The Circle Track encloses the VDTA and is a 4.5 miles (7.2 km) banked circle. It has five lanes posted with speed limits increasing towards the outermost lane. The speed limit for the outermost lane is 100+ MPH (160+ km/h). Due to the banking, each lane can be driven at its posted speed all the way around the circle without needing to touch the steering wheel, given proper wheel alignment and tire pressures. The track surface is extremely hard "dolomite" concrete for wear resistance.
• The North/South Straightaway is 6.225 miles (10.018 km) in total length and includes two 2.5 miles (4.0 km) straightaways
• The East/West Straightaway is 3.1 miles (5.0 km) around and includes two 1.2 mi (1.9 km)straightaways
• "Seven Sisters" is a short course featuring seven tight curves, some level, some banked. It is one lane that can be driven in both directions, so only one car is allowed on the course at a time. This is used for testing vehicles under transient lateral acceleration loads.
• 12 Mile Road is a straight section of pavement which duplicates the historical surface texture of a section of 12 Mile Road near Detroit.
• The Ride and Handling loop is enclosed by the Circle Track and has varied surfaces and turns.
• The Vehicle Safety & Crashworthiness Lab includes a recently added rollover test facility.
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[antijam]

Not surprisingly here in the UK we can't match that. Our best known proving ground is probably the MIRA (Motor Industry Research Association) site in Warwickshire. This covers about 750 acres.


One particular element I've always thought would be a nice test for C3 'Vettes.....


Any C3 owner confident enough to try his handbrake here....?

 

[Roscobbc]

That's like Test Hill at Brooklands.......go up it too fast and you'll have all kind of issues at the top

 

[teamzr1]

Going back to 1924 and what the track layout was
General Motors remains one of the largest automotive companies in the world. When you look back at the history of how the company engineered and tested their automobiles, you have to start with the GM Proving Grounds, established in 1924.

 

[teamzr1]

Also look at the old GM desert proving grounds for 50 years in Mesa Arz,
sold and built with working with the USA Army the Yuma Proving grounds for cold and hot weather testing

YUMA — General Motors will replace its hot weather test track in Mesa with a new, $100 million facility at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground, the Army said.
The automaker and the Army signed a deal to create a joint-use facility on 2,400 acres north of Yuma next to Highway 95. Instead of rent, GM will build both paved and gravel tracks to Army specifications to test high-speed, heavy military vehicles.

The adjacent stand-alone GM facility will be developed for testing the automaker’s products. Because it will be on military land and under restricted airspace, the automaker is assured of privacy as it develops new vehicles.
The military, the community and GM will all benefit from the deal, said Graham Stullenbarger, chief of the proving ground test office.

“We’ll get tens of millions of dollars’ worth of development and maintenance at no cost,” Stullenbarger said.
“It’s like Christmas for the Army.”

General Motors sold its longtime Desert Proving Ground in Mesa in December, netting $265 million for 3,200 desert acres once miles from nowhere but now in the heart of the burgeoning metropolitan Phoenix urban area. The company said it would be seeking a replacement for the hot weather test facilities and might even look in Mexico.

It retained a three-year lease on the property so it would have time to find and develop a replacement.

The GM facility in Mesa opened in 1953 and was the first of several test sites in Arizona. It had 100 miles of roads, including a five-mile circular track, and last years had 220 workers, both company employees and contractors. It earlier had sold 1,800 acres at the site to a Phoenix developer.

The Yuma County Board of Supervisors in May agreed in principle to repay a $250,000 loan from the Arizona Commerce and Economic Development Commission as an incentive for the automaker.

 

[teamzr1]

Old Mesa GM Test Track

 

[teamzr1]

GM and US Army Yuma Arz proving ground

 

[teamzr1]

General Motors and the U.S. Army officially opened GM’s new test facility in the southwest on the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground on July 22 2009. The ceremony marked the end of most construction activity and the beginning of a cooperative arrangement hammered out two years ago. The agreement will provide GM with a suitable test facility following the closing of its longstanding Mesa Proving Ground.

In the agreement GM has leased a portion of the Yuma Proving Ground from the government on which several test roads and support facilities have been built. Both the Army and GM will have access to road systems they currently did not have on their property. A win – win for both groups.

GM sold the Mesa Proving Ground when residential and commercial building encroached on their heretofore rural area. As property values increased, the value of the land the Proving Ground was sitting on became more valuable for development than for testing. GM’s rapid move from road testing to lab testing to using math based tools enabled the testing needs to be met with a much more modest size facility and limited test roads.

“This new facility meets several of our important product development needs,” said Ken Morris, executive director, Vehicle Integration, Proving Grounds and Performance Division. “We have a longer hot weather testing cycle, we have great partners with the Army and the city of Yuma, and we have a facility that will meet our needs in the years to come.”

The new facility will employ 75 engineers, technicians, and support staff, have 40 miles of roads, and cover 2400 acres of property on the Yuma site. The bulk of the work with be hot weather related testing, powertrain, ride and handling, and other vehicle development activities.

Yuma has proved to be a perfect fit for GMs needs with a longer hot weather season than the Mesa area, relatively isolated and secure from photographers looking to get shots of the latest models being tested, and excellent support capabilities from the Yuma community.

The facility includes:

• 3.5-mile Circle Track (3 lanes)
• 1.4-mile Straight Track (2 to 3 lanes)
• 3.1-mile Ride Road (2 to 4 lanes)
• 1,000’ x 1,000’ Dynamics Pad
• Interior Noise Road
• Noise Pass-by Facility
• Misc. Grades
• 72,000-square-foot Main Building
• Garage (40 Hoists)
• Office (120 Residents/Visitors)
• Product Electronics/Instrumentation Lab
• Alignment/Tire Facilities
• Transmission Build Room
• Machine/Fab Shop
• Parts Crib
• Warehouse (14,000 square feet)
• Sundrella (40 hoists)
• Covered Parking
• Fuel Facility
• Car Wash
• Scale House / Ballast Station

General Motor Desert Proving Grounds Yuma Facts

• Located on the U.S. Army military proving ground and artillery range
• 2,400-acre site
• 24-acre building campus
• 98,000 square feet of building area
• 12 miles of perimeter security fencing
• 8 archeological sites
• 330,000 tons of aggregate rock crushed onsite
• 1.9 million cubic yards of excavate material
• 87 lane miles of 12-foot test tracks & roads using approximately 110,000 tons of asphalt and 4,000 cubic yards of concrete
• Waste water/fresh water treatment
• 2 Water Storage Tanks – total 300,000 gallons using 49,000 bolts
• 4 construction water wells at peak production – 1.5 million/gals per day with over 350 million gallons used in construction for pre-wetting and dust control.
• 52,000 cubic yards of concrete placement for site
• Almost 2,700 linear feet of concrete arch culverts were built using over 8,000 cubic yards of concrete.
• Saguaro cactus, wild burros, coyotes, wild bees and rattlesnakes
• Peak manpower during construction: 250-plus
• Over 450,000 man-hours to complete the project