Inside Ford's top-secret lair

[Express]

Inside Ford's top-secret lair



We take a sneak peek behing the scenes at Ford's You Yangs Proving Ground


Andrew MacLean
10 December, 2015


We take a behind the scenes looks at Ford's You Yangs proving ground to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Photos: Supplied




























Shhhh…I'll let you in on a secret; Ford isn't finished in Australia.

The blue oval might have pulled the plug on its manufacturing operations, and will still cease building the Falcon and Territory at its Broadmeadows factory on October 7 next year, leaving behind a legacy that has stretched more than 95 years and, sadly, forcing hundreds of workers out of a job.

That decision, and the domino effect it had on both Holden and Toyota which will follow suit in 2017, has lead to a wide-held public perception that Ford is shutting-up shop completely.

But the American brand will continue to sell a range of fully-imported cars and as, it claims, become the biggest employer in the Australian automotive industry beyond 2017, maintaining a workforce of more than 1300 people as its design and engineering division soldiers on as a global centre of excellence for new vehicle development programs.

"In 2015 alone, Ford has spent around $300 million on R&D, bringing to $2 billion the amount of money spent on R and D over the past six years," Ford Australia President and CEO Graeme Whickman said.

Ford's Australian engineering centre, and the proving ground, played a pivotal role in the development of the latest Ranger ute and the recently arrived Everest SUV that it shares its underpinnings with, and was awarded Drive's 2015 Car of the Year. It also helped in creating a number of specific Ford models for the Chinese market, including the Figo small car and the Escort sedan.

"We're very proud of the fact that the Ford team in Australia has been recognised as the 'go to guys' for vehicle development," added Whickman.

A key tool for that brains trust to do their job well into the future is the You Yangs Proving Ground, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and was opened up to the media this week for a sneak peek at what goes on within its top-secret lair.

Located on 930ha of rural land, tucked inconspicuously behind the You Yangs mountain range that juts out of the flat plains 50km south-west of Melbourne, the facility is centred around a village of high-tech laboratories and littered with hundreds of kilometres of roads designed to simulate a huge variety of conditions.

Because of the secret nature of the work conducted there (with early prototype vehicles generally years away from seeing showroom duty), the entire compound is surrounded by high barb-wire fences with dark shade cloth to keep prying eyes – spy photographers and its competitors – from getting a glimpse at the future.

For us to even get through the front gate, we had to temporarily surrender our mobile phones and any camera gear to ensure that what we saw wasn't recorded in any way.

That's understandable once you're on the other side of its (lightly) fortified façade as the carparks are filled with psychedelically-camouflaged mules, cobbled-together prototypes and hard-worked validation vehicles. To the layman, it would probably first appear as though it was a clapped-out collection of junkers (as some of them are wearing odd wheels between the front and rear, different coloured panels and have bits hanging off them), but the reality is most of them are hand-built prototypes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they're not just Falcons and Territorys either, with the majority of them either currently being built – or set to be built – overseas, showcasing how Ford Australia is genuinely plugged into the blue oval's global development scheme.

Our brief whistlestop tour only included an inside look at a few key elements of the proving ground's myriad of facilities, starting with its Emission Test Laboratory; an area of the automotive industry that has come under the spotlight recently as a result of the Volkswagen cheating scandal.

Ford's test centre houses three individual cells that measure emission outputs in controlled conditions with the ability to alter the climatic conditions from the extreme cold of -40 degrees to a maximum of 50 degrees, both in a static environment and on a rolling road.

Ford's Emission Test manager, Martin Thurkettle, says the company performs between 3000 and 5000 individual tests each year. While the company is presently investing in new technologies to test real-world outputs in-line with imminent regulation changes, he says the controlled conditions of the laboratory are still the most accurate way to measure and analyse the numbers.

Working in conjunction with the Emission Lab, the adjacent Advanced Centre for Automotive Research and Testing (ACART) wind tunnel allows the engineers to validate the durability of components and systems in a wind tunnel that can also simulate varying climatic conditions and loads at speeds up to 250km/h.

Unlike traditional wind tunnels used to test and influence aerodynamics (Ford does that at the Monash University in Melbourne), a car is driven by a robot that can literally change gears to stress the engine and gearbox to its limits for hours at a time to find any weaknesses.

There are also other buildings that house things such as a kinematic rig (which tests suspension components), a squeaks and rattles test bed that can replicate a wide variety of road conditions, a vehicle crash lab and a semi-anechoic chamber (essentially a sound-proof shed where engineers can identify and tune noises emanating from individual components).

And then there's the huge variety of real-life roads, from the 4.8km Constant Speed Track (where drivers can achieve a 'hands-off' neutral speed at 164km/h in the banking), the 3.6km Basic Durability Road, a 5km Unimproved Road with gravel sections, potholes and wash boards, a 610mm deep water bath, two skid pads and a 19-corner Ride and Handling Track with two different configurations.

We got to sample the latter in its full 2.5km layout, which is like a mini racetrack with a variety of bends – most of them quite quick and flowing with only two hard braking areas; one at the end of the long back straight and the other into a series of tight esses at the southern end.

Wherever you look around at a proving ground like You Yangs it is like Disneyland for car enthusiasts. The only problem is admission into the automotive theme park is severely restricted.

In the end, You Yangs is one of only a handful of proving grounds in the Ford world with the extensive capability to fully develop new vehicles. And that's why it will outlive the blue oval's manufacturing operations. Maybe even for another 50 years.

The Birth of You Yangs

One of the most significant moments in Ford Australia's history happened at the You Yangs proving ground.

In 1965, the blue oval was bleeding as sales of the first locally-built Falcon were on the slide due to persistent durability issues. To counter that, Ford's enigmatic sales and marketing manager Bill Bourke launched the new XP model Falcon with a torturous nine-day endurance test around the proving grounds, dubbed the Falcon-Mobil 70,000 mile Durability Run.

A team of five cars had to complete the distance at an average of 70mp/h (112km/h), even though no-one had yet worked out what a realistic average speed of the test track was at the time. The end result was that it literally pushed the cars to the limit - and four of them actually rolled over - but they achieved the feat and the resultant media coverage changed the perception of the Falcon, and saved the blue oval's reputation.

http://www.drive.com.au/motor-featur...09-glju15.html