Most gearheads know that untold square acres of research and development, not to mention budget, are behind each and every one of the new vehicle models on sale today. But the specifics of that testing and analysis are often shrouded in mystery.
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How does a company make sure its shiny new model is ready for the outrageous weather we see in this country? Can it determine the best suspension tuning that won’t rattle fillings out of the driver’s teeth without needing to build a gazillion test mules? And to what extent can it assure customers a new vehicle is going to last over a decade without actually, you know, driving it for the next ten years?
Ford allowed us a rare peek behind the curtain of its vehicle and prototype testing, permitting the type of behind-the-scenes access generally reserved for employees of the automaker or suits flying in from a supplier company located abroad. We examined so-called “soak rooms” that could take ambient air from -40 degrees C to 55 degrees C; sampled a simulator worthy of any program at NASA; ripped around a dirt track built just for developing the Mustang Mach-E Rally; and hung on in a wind tunnel whilst wind and snow whipped around in excess of 100 km/h (160 mph).
The first stop at the Driveability Testing Facility was a quartet of soak rooms, each about triple the size of a typical commercial walk-in freezer and able to fit up to three cars at a pop. A vestibule area approximately the size of a rural bungalow allows access to the rooms and permits the storage of some vehicles. At the end stood two enormous doors, one of which led to a refuelling area for internal-combustion cars; while the other was a portal to a sealed room which acted as something of an airlock between the outside world and this inner sanctum of simulated weather.
Even that fuelling room is tightly controlled, operating under negative pressure to exhaust any fumes and carefully keeping both gasoline and diesel at a steady 10 degrees C to reduce scientific variables.
And, boy, is there plenty of science. On this day, an all-electric Mustang Mach-E was being turned into a Popsicle, with simulated snow being hove at it from a wheeled dispenser and chilled air reducing ambient temps in the room to about -30 degrees C. “We can put an inch of snow on this car in about 45 minutes,” explained Ford’s Doug Olsen as he positioned the rig whilst dodging a blast of icy air.
Olsen is a wind-tunnel engineer who started his Ford career in the year 2000 as a manufacturing process engineer at Flat Rock Assembly, where he contributed to the launch cars like the 2004 Mustang and 2009 Shelby GT500.
“Sometimes we do a whole vehicle test such as this,” Olsen elaborated, such as if they want to simulate how a vehicle (especially an EV, these days) will react to being left outside in the dead of winter. “Other times, teams will test and focus on a single component like a battery or windshield wiper.” In either case, they hope to far exceed in testing what a customer will actually experience in real life.
Across the way from the frigid Mach-E, another soak room is baking at 36 degrees C, on its way to an asphyxiating 55 degrees C before the end of this day. If you’re wondering, the walls in here are about two-and-a-half-feet thick, or just under a metre, whilst the concrete floors have robust insulation. Despite this, there is plenty of cell service available (proving places like Costco and Walmart could allow our phones to work just fine if they really wanted to).
Another wind tunnel engineer, John Welch, told us it can take about 16 hours for the floor to get as warm as an ambient air temperature of 37 degrees C after the space was used for cold testing. Humidity is kept right around 40% as a control, though that can be cranked as needed. “There’s plenty of precision here, but also trial and error,” Olsen laughs.
For example, the team learned the hard way – “That’s how we learn a lot of stuff,” Olsen grins – not to turn off the snow-making machine until it is out of the frigid soak room, lest it freeze internally like Hudson Bay in February. Adding some resistive wiring, like an electric baseboard heater, apparently helped.
Next door to this facility is a wind tunnel, in which sits a new Bronco, its four wheels spinning furiously on a dynamometer. Rather than holding the powertrain at a steady speed, the team can modulate acceleration and braking remotely. It is this room in which testing is done to simulate tough driving scenarios, such as driving headfirst into a blinding snowstorm to see if a vehicle can handle the conditions without grinding to a halt or turning its powertrain into 10,000 oily bottle caps.
Olsen and company crank the Bronco up to 65 km/h (40 mph) whilst firing snow and sleet at it on similar velocity. Ambient air temps in the wind tunnel are -25 degrees C today, though the gusty winds being generated drive windchill to a face-shattering -70 degrees C. The car being tested will endure this abuse for up to 300 kilometres depending on testing requirements.
But one of the biggest shows is reserved for the company’s main wind tunnel, an absolutely enormous space in which a Mustang sat rather innocuously — except what was happening invisibly around the coupe wasn’t innocuous at all. This is the wind tunnel in which teams test the likes of NVH and aerodynamics, keeping ambient air temps and humidity strictly controlled to eliminate variables.
Generating wind speeds of up to 320 km/h (200 mph) is a towering single fan with a dozen carbon-fibre blades and a stunning diameter of over eight metres. Walking through the blades (whilst it was off, naturally) was like being a set extra in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids with its massive scale.
This is the fastest wind tunnel of its type for ground-based vehicles, one whose wind works with an interchangeable rolling road system to help with science-y concepts like air boundary layers and coefficients of drag. After being locked in position, operators can move the car on a turntable up to 30 degrees in either direction from centre, helping engineers take measurements like drag, side force, and downforce. It is here designers will whittle endlessly, chasing fuel efficiency or EV driving range.
What about those famous smoke wands? You know, the ones which visually reveal the flow of air around the finer parts of a vehicle and are a crowd favourite on television? “We only break those out when we’re looking to put on a show,” grinned John Toth, the Engineering Supervisor for wind tunnels in North America. It turns out the smoke generally dissipates into a useless fog at speeds much beyond those found in a parking lot — though we understand why it makes for good theatre.
There’s plenty of precision here, but also trial and error
Doug Olsen, Ford wind-tunnel engineer
After all, cars in the wind tunnel just appear to be sitting there, despite the reams of useful data being collected. If suits from the corner offices need visual justification for spending millions of dollars on a particular aero program, it helps to throw them a bone in terms of something they can actually see.
How far ahead does a company like Ford peer into the future? “We’re working on some 2028 and ’29 models,” Toth grins. Having worked his entire 24-year tenure in the wind tunnels, it’s safe to say the man has seen plenty of product long before it is shown to John Q. Public.
The final two pieces of Ford’s testing puzzle involves putting butts in seats — virtually and in person. A simulator not unlike one used by the best of aerospace and made from the front half of an Explorer ST is deployed during vehicle development from initial concept all the way up through production. A dozen computers are loaded with data, allowing engineers to swap complicated suspension bits or load up a pickup truck with a thousand pounds of payload with a few keystrokes.
Louis Jamail, supervisor of Simulation and Core Methods, uses his 26 years of experience to walk us through the finer points of handling this sim rig whilst it’s set to emulate a laden 2024 F-150 Tremor and a 2024 Mustang GT. Sure, the cabin environment remains as an Explorer, but the driving experiences (including sensory inputs like ride height) are bang on to what this author has felt in the real world, aided by hydraulic rams and a movement system which ironically works not unlike an air hockey table but in reverse.
Our day ends out at the 4,000-acre Michigan Proving Grounds north of Dearborn, riding shotgun as ace wheelman Chris Berchin deploys 31 years of experience to throw a Mustang Mach-E Rally around a dirt track designed specifically for that model’s development. Other areas, like Silver Creek, which replicates harsh off-road conditions but with steel and concrete, have been used for some spell to put a decade’s worth of wear on a car in just three months.
Other courses include a massive 45-degree paved hill (we drove up a one-in-three grade and it felt like ascending the moon) and huge off-road areas. Parts of the course are so brutal on vehicles that most of them run autonomously around the clock, since most surface conditions are too extreme for human drivers.
It all puts an exclamation point on the amount of testing plowed into the development of a new vehicle at Ford. And much respect to those toiling on the development teams — working on a rig sitting in a simulated snowstorm at -75 degrees C is not to be trifled. We’ll take the 55-degree-C soak room, thanks.
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