This is lightly modified from a Twitter thread that covered the same topic.
Last time I went down the research rabbit hole, I shared some of the history and current conditions of US 60 through metro Phoenix. It’s only fitting to look at where they test the cars for which highways like US 60 were built. Today we’re exploring Proving Grounds around Arizona.
Arizona has a lot of proving grounds, so we won’t get to all of them here. But we’ll look at some notable ones, some that have been shuttered, and answer some questions about these facilities. Why Arizona? Because the Arizona desert is great for hot weather testing far from prying eyes. The first stop on our tour is the Toyota Arizona Proving Grounds (TAPG). Shown in the first tweet in this thread, in the photo below you can see that while it’s isolated, the never-ending growth of the Phoenix metro is slowly encroaching on the site.Opened in 1993, TAPG has a high-speed oval, an off-road testing course, a helipad, and several other facilities. You can see those below in this map from Toyota’s website. The point of these facilities is to push a vehicle to its breaking point and TAPG is no exception.Relative isolation is important to these facilities, as they are testing pre-production or not yet announced vehicles. As urban growth starts to encroach on these facilities, companies look for new, farther afield locations. This is what happened to our next subject: Eastmark.Located in Mesa, Eastmark was once General Motors’ Desert Proving Ground. GM announced the sale of the site in 2006, but announced the search for a new facility as early as 2000. It opened in 1953, operating for more than 50 years just outside Mesa. Here’s a photo from 1953:
Interestingly, GM was testing vehicles in the valley long before they built their proving ground. The first facility GM established was at Roosevelt & 20th St. in central Phoenix and still stands today. Opened in 1938, it’s a gorgeous building.
As GM left the valley, they set up a new, even more isolated location near Yuma. Co-located with the US Army’s Desert Proving Ground, the location is literally in a no-fly zone, adding to the secrecy. You can see the site and its surroundings here. Opened in 2009, it has 2,400 acres and 40 miles of road for testing. As before, the site is intended to focus on hot-weather testing. If you’ve been to Yuma in the summer, you know that they probably couldn’t find a better location to see how vehicles do in the heat.If isolation is key, then the next facility bests GM’s Yuma facility with ease. Chrysler’s Arizona’s Proving Ground is located in Yucca, AZ, approximately 25 miles south of Kingman. Chrysler bought the site from Ford in 2007, which is just the beginning of the site’s history.Ford established their Arizona Proving Ground at Yucca in 1955. The company owned and operated the site from that point until its sale in 2007. Like other AZ sites, it focuses on hot weather testing. It features a high-speed oval, on & offroad testing facilities, and much more.How did Ford end up in Yucca, Arizona? Like, so many other Arizona oddities, it starts with the Army & World War II. Before it was a proving ground, it was the Yucca Army Airfield, a satellite field for Kingman AAF, established in 1941. If you look, the triangle infield gives away its former use.In fact, if you look even more closely, you can see that a yellow X indicating a closed runway is visible on site. This is because Ford maintained its airfield use while they were testing on-site. The original tower still remains, incredibly.Evidently Packard did some testing on the runways at the site before Ford acquired the location in 1955. These days, Harley-Davidson also tests on the site, meaning that this single location has been an Army Airfield and a test site for 4 brands in its 80 years of existence. Why did Chrysler acquire the site in 2007? Like GM, Chrysler had a facility in Wittman, which is near Phoenix. But it determined that the land was more valuable to be sold for housing than as a proving ground. This was the bubble just before the recession, remember. The site was pitched as perfect for a master-planned community, like Verrado in Buckeye. Eventually it was sold to Toll Brothers and, as you can see in the image below, has yet to be built on. Interestingly, rumors swirled that Apple might lease the site for autonomous vehicle testing in 2017.So where did Ford go then? When it sold the Yucca facility, Ford indicated that they would not maintain a presence in Arizona. And yet, Ford has a facility just outside of Phoenix to this day. It turns out that the Ford Arizona Proving Ground was originally a Volvo site. Ford acquired Volvo in 1999 – a purchase that included the Arizona Proving Ground. Prior to selling Volvo to Geely in 2009, Ford took control of the site, though Volvo still tests there. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the site is adjacent to a former Army Airfield.
Chrysler and Ford played the proving ground equivalent of musical chairs in the early 00’s. But, in addition to Toyota and the Big 3 American automakers, there are a handful of other proving grounds around Arizona. We’ll run through them quickly here. Volkswagen has a test facility near Maricopa.
Nissan has a test facility near Stanfield.The Komatsu Arizona Proving Ground is located in Sahuarita. You might be wondering what Komatsu is, and for good reason, because it isn’t an automaker. Instead, on this 660 acre mine site, they test rigid chasis mining trucks. Honestly, this one might be the coolest on this list.Finally, we’ll explore another proving ground that’s no longer in operation. The old Caterpillar Arizona Proving Ground opened in 1944 near the White Tank Mountains. As part of the facility, CAT built the scar, a road straight up the mountain with a 15% grade. It’s in the photo. Caterpillar tested at the location until 1990 – nearly 50 years – until it moved to a new, more isolated facility in Green Valley, south of Tucson. Like Komatsu’s, this site is adjacent to mines. It sits on 6,240 acres.Returning to the original test site, in 1997 Caterpillar partnered with DMB to turn it into Verrado, which is now in Buckeye. By now you might be sensing a theme – the unstoppable growth of the valley swallowing up all that stands in its way for subdivisions.Now, there are many more of these that I didn’t cover here. And some automakers still test on the roads in the valley. I’ll never stop getting excited seeing a camouflaged vehicle convoy roaming the streets of Phoenix. Keep your eyes peeled for these, they’re fairly common.
Sources for this thread include: Allpar, Jalopnik, Komatsu, Toyota, Wikipedia, Maricopa County Historical Aerials, the East Valley Tribune, the Arizona Republic, Loopnet, Autoblog, Phoenix Business Journal, CBS, VirtualGlobetrotting, and Google Maps.
Desert City Dispatch 