MARICOPA, Ariz. — Here in the Sonoran Desert, shielded from prying eyes by an impenetrable wall of 15-foot-tall shrubs, lies a supersecret torture camp for cars.
For more than a quarter century, Volkswagen has used this anonymous 2.5- square-mile tract of sand — with its merciless sun and triple-digit temperatures — to test the breaking points of every vehicle and component it sells. Under the Arizona sun, a Bentley Continental bakes on the blacktop between an Audi Q5 and a Seat Mii — all dressed in black paint and fresh off their respective assembly lines — along with scores of all-black Skodas and Lamborghinis, Bugattis and VWs.
A few hundred feet away, other unlucky vehicles meet a different fate. Clad by their respective factories around the world in white paint, they take turns inside darkened, sealed chambers being sprayed for hours at a time with fine salty mists, basting in a choking mix of high heat and brine-y humidity, before being quickly moved to another chamber, where the air and humidity replicate central Alaska in January.
This is Volkswagen's $100 million Arizona Proving Grounds, the automaker's worldwide center of excellence for high- temperature testing and the place where it brings samples from all 355 of its vehicles to learn how they are likely to fail and, hopefully, how to prevent it.
Automotive News was among a handful of publications given a first look at the proving ground this month as the facility quietly celebrated its 26th anniversary. No photos were allowed on the tour, though journalists were able to drive freshened VW Passats on a handful of test tracks. The photos accompanying this story were provided by the automaker.
The 2020 Passat — which is being updated with new sheet metal and interior components on its existing platform instead of being redesigned onto Volkswagen's global MQB architecture as previously planned — is due to be revealed in January at the Detroit auto show. The car will retain the same powertrain combination as the outgoing model, albeit with upgraded software to improve performance.
12 years of corrosion
On the Dec. 4 visit, journalists were allowed to drive camouflaged Passats around a 33-degree banked high-speed oval, as well as on a paved handling course, a gravel course and a dust course, each at relatively high speeds. Each track is designed to inflict maximum stress on a vehicle so that any sealant failures or intrusions of dust and debris can be spotted during enclosed environment testing, explained Gerold Bremer, director of technical development for Volkswagen de Mexico.
VW built the 1,600-acre Arizona Proving Grounds in the early 1990s after a conflict arose at the automaker's testing site near what was then called Phoenix International Raceway. That site opened in the late 1970s, said Jim Marsella, a 41-year VW employee and senior director of the proving ground.
"Somewhere in the production life cycle of every model that we build in every plant worldwide," Marsella said, "we pluck a car off the assembly line, send it here, and in 90 days of running through the chambers and test roads, we can equal 12 years of corrosion that you would see somewhere back on the East Coast, where they're salting roads in the wintertime and where corrosion is a real issue on vehicles."
After undergoing weeks of testing, every vehicle — regardless of price — is torn apart, rivet by rivet, seam by seam, to search for additional evidence of defects. Afterward, the remnants are scrapped.
Next challenge
Yet, for holding such an important role in the automaker's development process, the proving ground is all but anonymous. Local residents see plenty of camouflaged vehicles on the roads, but even if they follow them, they're unlikely to know what lies beyond the hedges.
"We still don't have a sign in front of the building, and I'm not allowed to fly a Volkswagen flag or any other brand flag in front of the building because we're still considered a secret prototype facility," Marsella said.
VW engineers bring the products they're in charge of to the proving ground for testing and stay to conduct their own tests, Marsella said. During the high-heat season — roughly from April through October — as many as 2,000 engineers from across the global corporate spectrum will visit the Arizona Proving Grounds to conduct their own testing.
Beginning in 2019, the facility will take on another challenge: validating the first of 30 to 50 electric vehicles the automaker plans to introduce by 2025 across its many brands. Work will start here after the first of the year on a 50-vehicle charging facility to help test EVs.
"We will increase dramatically in 2019 the testing of these vehicles," Marsella explained. "It's a critical function to test the vehicle in high ambient temperatures, especially now that we're talking about charge rates up to 350 kilowatts on some of our vehicles or 150 kW on some of our base brands. That combination of high-voltage charge and high temperature can cause some conditions in achieving fast charge rates."
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