Chapter Three: A Virtual RideLab techs will then assist a handful of guests into a briefing room where a four-minute video will instruct them on vehicle safety and offer a glimpse of what's to come. This is a good time to raise your hand if the intensity is too much.
After boarding the six-passenger vehicles, you are immediately pushed against the seat as a squealing of tires sends you up a 15 degree grade at 20 m.p.h. Cameras track your progress as you top out at around the three story-level and begin to endure a series of tests. With a quick right turn you encounter the German Block, a steep grade covered with brick. At the bottom of the grade is the Belgian Block, your vehicle must come to a stop before a red light while engaging cobblestones.
Facing a series of cones ahead, you zip forward and around a tight curve to the right, skidding out of control and knocking cones over. The turn is then made with anti-lock brakes and you're allowed to see your reaction around both turns on video.
The environmental tests begin as you enter a chamber that simulates climate changes. You'll feel sweltering heat and then freezing cold--robotic arms spray the vehicle and all inside to test for corrosiveness before you exit and head up into a winding mountain pass.
Then, it's an incredible dive down into darkness, inside of a tunnel, and upon emerging--you find yourself on a narrow bridge face to face with a huge 18-wheeler, horn blaring and headlights bearing down upon you. With a swerve, you clear the truck in a shower of sparks and head off down the road. You turn a corner and enter another testing area.
Suddenly, a '96 Firebird accelerates past your car and you watch as it smashes head on into a yellow and black barricade, the hood crumbles with the impact. As you round the corner, the lights come up and you see that you're heading for a similar barricade, the vehicle picks up speed. At the last possible moment, the barricade breaks apart and sends you zipping outside the building and onto the speed-testing track.
Gaining momentum, the track curves to the right sharply over the cast member parking lot and then levels out before launching into a 50 degree banked turn to the left. With a burst of speed, your car soars forward down the straightening roadway, and glimpsing the speed gauges along the rode, you edge the mark of 65 m.p.h just as you begin to circumnavigate the 318 feet diameter building. Right before you re-enter at the point where you exited, a thermal imaging display shows you your body temperature as well as the temperature of the vehicle.
Once back inside, jittery test engineers can check out a "post-show" which will feature plenty of multi-media displays and information about General Motors and the automotive industry.
But you'll most likely want to hop back in line again.
The GM Test Track was scheduled for a May '97 opening, however the story that began so successfully would have its share of glitches.
As work progressed on the building interior, designs were changed for the vehicles which prompted a delay in testing. During the testing phase, three of the new vehicles were flown out from Glendale and run on the track successfully on many runs, and not so successfully on other runs. 
Problems with e-stops on the radius curve and the rapid deterioration of the tires came up as major re-design issues and the team went back to the drawing boards yet again, pushing the opening date back once more.
With WDI still testing the Test Track, plans to open the ride have been put-off until at least the very early part of '98. With all the vehicles in place, the process has begun to put hours on the cars. When the opportunity came to take a walking tour of the attraction, we were there to get a personal look at how progress was going.
30 seconds - Load/Unload time---
1600 - Hourly capacity---
5,246 feet - Total length of track traveled from, start to finish---
65 m.p.h. - Maximum speed reached by test vehicles---
6 - Maximum number of guests each test vehicle can seat---
5 min. 34 sec. - Time elapsed during attraction's automotive adventure---
50,000 - Number of miles each test vehicle will travel per year---
equivalent to nearly four times the miles the average U.S. car is driven annually or more than 21 road trips from Orlando to Detroit and back---
1 million - Number of miles each test vehicle was designed to last---
enough miles to make a trip from the Earth to the Moon more than four times---
250 - Horsepower generated by each test vehicle---
roughly equal to the super-charged 3.8 Liter/240 horsepower 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix---
8.8 - Number of seconds it takes test vehicle to go from 0-65 m.p.h. during attraction---
as speedy as the 1997 Pontiac Grand Am which reaches 0-60 in 8.6 seconds---
50 degrees - Angle of banking on "highway" which loops around building's massive 320-foot diameter---
3 - Number of on-board computers in each test vehicle which together have more processing power than the Space Shuttle---
34 - Number of turns hugged by each test vehicle between start and finish---
15 degrees - Steepness of three-story hill climb at attraction's series of scheduled tests---
85 - Number of road signs lining the attraction's series of scheduled tests---
100 degrees - Temperature change between hot and cold during environmental chamber testing---
720 - Number of times daily that crash-test dummies will be struck in the chest, banged on the knees and have their necks bent in pre-show demonstrations---
2108 - Number of blue anechoic cones lining the walls and ceiling at electromagnetic compatibility test in attractions pre-show---
4 - Number of wheels per vehicle that are visible---
22 - Total number of wheels per vehicle---
6 - Number of braking systems on board each vehicle---cars sold today have one or two braking systems---
0 - The amount of steel between the front and rear wheels -- the vehicle chassis is made of composite materials---
4446 - The number of times daily that a display vehicle will collide headfirst, then reset, in high-speed barrier test--