General Motors Co. plans to open a new, 75,000-square-foot technical center initially dedicated to performance and racing in the Charlotte, N.C. suburb of Concord, 10 miles from the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The Charlotte area is home to the race shops of every NASCAR Cup team.
The GM facility, expected to open by mid-2020, follows the establishment of Toyota Racing Development’s performance and engineering center in Salisbury, 40 miles northeast of Charlotte, and the Ford Performance Technical Center, also in Concord.
“We’re thrilled to expand GM’s U.S. footprint by establishing a greater presence in Charlotte, a community that has become a racing and engineering mecca,” says Jim Campbell, U.S. vice president of performance and motorsports at Chevrolet. “The new facility will be close to a number of key Chevrolet and Cadillac racing partners, teams, and suppliers. This will allow for improved collaboration as well as access to some of the industry’s best talent.”
The new technical center provides GM the opportunity to expand and enhance its support for Chevrolet NASCAR race teams as well as various other GM racing teams. The facility will feature driver-in-the-loop simulators, vehicle simulation, aero development, and other practices designed to advance racing and production capabilities.
The facility will focus on transferring knowledge and resources from the racing programs to core vehicle engineering. The goal for the Charlotte Technical Center is to eventually house future technology and engineering development capabilities.
“Chevrolet and Cadillac Racing are two of the winningest brands in motorsports,” says Campbell. “This new facility will build upon their legacies and hopefully lead to even more success on the track. Racing helps us accelerate the development, performance, and popularity of our cars and trucks across the world.”
Development technologies often make their way from the racing world to production vehicles. Computational fluid dynamics, scale model testing, and rolling wind-tunnel testing all were pioneered in racing and now are used extensively in production vehicle development.
