General Motors yesterday recognized the 100-year anniversary of the oldest test site in the automotive industry, the Milford Proving Ground.
After a century in operation, the proving ground, strategically placed between GM’s hubs in Flint, Detroit, Lansing and Pontiac, Michigan, still plays a crucial role in GM’s testing and R&D operations.
GM bought the 1,125-acre site in 1923 for about $100,000. Originally called “The Bluff,” the site provided 5.5 miles of test roads on rugged terrain with 267 feet of elevation change. The grounds now have more than 4,000 acres and 150 miles of roads.
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Each year, GM’s engineers drive some 15 million miles at Milford, which can also simulate extreme environmental conditions, from -40°F to 130°F, from -700 feet to 12,500 feet altitudes and wind speeds from 0 to 100 mph.
Initially, Milford had just two buildings on site. Now, 4,200 employees span 170 buildings. The proving ground has its own electrical substation, wastewater treatment facility, on-site emergency services and medical facility.
Without Milford, the automotive landscape arguably looks entirely different, from testing the Hydra-Matic, the first mass-produced automatic transmission in the 1930s to testing fully autonomous cars today. While GM and Cruise started testing the first fully autonomous Chevy Bolt in 2016, the automaker was testing a self-driving Chevy in the 1950s—the car followed a cabled embedded in a test track.
Every Corvette has been tested at Milford; one of the first car seats designed to protect children in accidents, the “infant love seat” came out of Milford in 1969, and now Super Cruise, the automaker’s hands-free driver assistance technology continues to be shaped at the site.
GM’s President Mark Reuss even began his career with the company at the proving ground. Reuss spent his summers working on valve train noise and vibration for V6 engines as a student.
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