NCCAR off to promising start

RICHARD GOULD, HERALD STAFF WRITER

WELDON - Simon Cobb, director of North Carolina Operations for Lotus Engineering Inc., delivered a multi-media presentation outlining the status and goals of the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research at the fourth annual meeting of Halifax Business Horizons Wednesday night.

Cobb's PowerPoint presentation detailed NCCAR's plans for their 625-acre site. NCCAR's test track was designed by Alastair McQueen, who drew on his more than 30 years of experience at Lotus Engineering and the 55 tracks he's driven on while conducting tests around the world.

According to Cobb, McQueen knows exactly what auto manufacturers around the world are looking for in a test track and he's incorporated those into his design in an effort to appeal to the widest possible spectrum of auto makers.

Cobb said that although “Computer simulation is the cornerstone of the automotive industry now,” modern computer simulation testing doesn't diminish the importance of traditional road testing because the cars have to be run on a test track to provide the data engineers plug into their simulations.

Then, after the engineers have proven that their designs work on a computer, they go back to the track to make sure they work in the real world.

While Northampton County might seem like an odd place to build a world-class center for automotive research, Cobb says one of its major benefits is that it's only about 11 hours from Detroit, while many of the test facilities auto makers are currently using are located on the West coast - nearly three times that far.

Cobb also pointed out that Chrysler sold it's California proving grounds to a real estate developer for $450 million and with other automakers following suit, there's a huge demand for an independent facility where these companies can be charged a premium to test their vehicles.

During the presentation, Cobb was careful to note that, although Lotus has been instrumental in the design and planning of the site, NCCAR will be an independent test facility open to any and all manufacturers wishing to run automotive tests. It will not only be a Lotus test track.