Northampton County is nurturing an enterprise that may well change the face of Eastern North Carolina — The North Carolina Center for Automotive Research.

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For several years, this was a shared dream. Today, it is bricks, mortar and moving earth.

The multi-million dollar project is expected to eventually open jobs to hundreds of people and bring a new high technology industrial foundation to the rural area.

The secret to its success has been working together — the county, the state and numerous private companies including Lotus America.

Most recently, Heaton Construction Inc., a Roanoke Valley-based firm, was the winning bidder for the construction of the buildings in Phase 1A of the NCCAR.

Heaton Construction’s bid totaled $2,795,000. 

Phase 1A of the project includes the center’s 23,620 square-foot engineering building, client garage and operations building and the entry security building.

The operations building will include six fully-equipped, double-bay client garages with integrated offices and secure storage, three engineering suites with individual offices and bull-pen areas, and conference facilities.  NCCAR officials describe the facility as being designed to provide clients a very user-friendly environment for conveniently, efficiently and effectively conducting their work.

“The design integrates office, garage and support functions such that engineers and technicians can conduct their work at NCCAR as if they were working at their own facilities.  Plus, fully-secure high-speed Internet connectivity in the operations building, coupled with WiFi which will be available across the site, providing virtually seamless communications and data transmission,” said NCCAR President and CEO Simon Cobb.

PLT Construction has been the general contractor in charge of site development and will continue to oversee the overall project site as Heaton constructs the buildings. PLT has not been named as the contractor who will actually build the test track, that will include a 2.1 mile ride and handling course in Phase 1A construction. The course is 40 feet wide to provide for lane-change maneuvers, and to allow the use of cones and variations to corner geometry. Phase 1A will also include an integrated vehicle dynamics area (VDA) of 670 feet by 125 feet (approximately 2 acres).

Once construction of the test track is completed, it will consist of the 4.6 mile ride and handling course designed to exacting standards, vehicle dynamics areas with high-speed entries, an advanced chassis dynamics laboratory, and many other state of the art features that will attract all types of vehicle testing from manufacturers around the world. Cobb said the potential for vehicle testing at NCCAR goes far beyond just internal combustion engine powered vehicles and will include after-market and parts manufacturers of all kinds.