Carmakers test track at Dysney's Kingdom

By Russell Williamson

HAVE you ever wondered what goes through the mind of a crash- test dummy milliseconds before the car slams into the barrier?

Visitors to Disney's Vacation Kingdom, Florida, will soon be able to experience the feeling first hand.

Together with General Motors, Disney has created the Test Track ride at the theme park's Epcot Center. The ride takes visitors through all the tests a car goes through before it reaches the showroom floor, including a frontal-barrier test.

Thrill seekers ride 185kW, six-seater sleds through a twisting, turning 1.6km track of hills, hairpins and highways, reaching speeds of up to 100kmh.

The design for the Test Track vehicles is based on the hydraulic-controlled, gas-energized HYGE sleds used by GM for its controlled crash tests in place of actual vehicles.

The vice president and general manager of marketing and advertising for GM North American Operations, Phil Guarascio, said the ride was the closest people could get to actually driving around one of the company's proving grounds.

"It will take people behind the scenes and provide an insight that can't be experienced anywhere else -- unless you happen to work for GM," Guarascio said.

"Walt Disney Imagineers have done a masterful job of emulating the rigors of vehicle testing that all our brands go through," he said.

The ride starts with a 15-degree ascent up the equivalent of three stories before descending over a series of varied road surfaces to test the suspension.

Carmakers' proving grounds replicate different road surfaces from around the world for such tests, with companies like Lexus even taking plaster casts of actual road surfaces to ensure their accuracy. Belgian and German cobbled roads are just two surfaces recreated by Disney.

Following the suspension test, passengers wind their way through a series of witches hats for a handling test before the vehicles are subjected to extreme heat, cold and a "corrosive" mist sprayed by industrial robots.

The vehicles then rapidly accelerate up a tunneled mountain road, come face-to-face with a frontal-crash test barrier and fly around a steep bank on a surface inclined up to 50 degrees.

Finally, the vehicle goes through a thermal imager, which allows riders to see where heat is generated on both the vehicle and its passengers during the ride.

Following the ride, visitors are taken through a multimedia assembly plant displaying the latest GM vehicles and concepts for the future.