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Chevy Real World Engineer Testing Improves Brand

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Chevy engineers seeks out extreme real world conditions to test their vehicles in.

Chevy engineers seeks out extreme real world conditions to test their vehicles in.

In the car industry, each carmaker has testing facilities and proving grounds around the globe to make sure their vehicles can perform at their best. General Motors has taken this pre-production testing to the extreme, allowing three of their engineers to take Chevrolet products out into the real world, to test the vehicles firsthand. We’ve detailed the results of this Chevy real world engineer testing below.


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To test the effects of cold weather on the Chevrolet Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel, Tessa Baughman, energy and powertrain integration engineer, took the sedan to Hotel de Glace, an ice hotel outside of Quebec City. On her drive there, she dealt with whiteout condition, large snowdrifts, and frigid Canadian January weather. Through all this snow and cold, the Cruze Diesel wasn’t fazed and received an average 42.4 mpg over the course of the trip.

In order to test a test model Spark, Nate Summer, a vehicle dynamics-ride and handling engineer, didn’t just drive around town. Instead, he loaded up the Spark with ski equipment and his two sisters and headed to Boyne Mountain, a ski resort in northern Michigan. After spending time trekking up and down mountains, Summer drove to Atlanta to spend time with his family. Throughout the 10.5-hour trip, the Spark didn’t waver once, keeping each of the passengers’ phones fully charged and the Pandora radio streaming.


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Finally, to ensure that the 2015 Tahoe could handle more than pavement pockmarked with potholes, Greg Stamm, Tahoe and Suburban ride-and-handling engineer, took the full-size SUV to McPherson Pass outside Yuma, Arizona. With 16-18 miles of off-roading courses, this track is intended specifically for specialty vehicles and includes a ramp of piled stones that all vehicles who take the Pass on must scale. The 2015 took on this rough and tumble track not once, not twice, but three times, showcasing the Tahoe’s independent coil-over-shock with twin-tube shock absorbers.

To see what the Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel, Spark, and Tahoe have to offer, make sure you stop by your local Chevrolet dealer today!