In the January/February 2008 issue of Truck Trend, we published a story on the various proving grounds around the country that allow truck manufacturers to create and test new pickups. These top-security areas are a combination of boring engineering buildings and various test tracks located in the middle of nowhere, basically play areas for truck guys -- hill climbs, dirt courses, high-speed ovals, sand washes, rutted pavement, and the like. Not a bad place to work if you can get the job. A few years ago, SEMA (our industries annual trade show Mecca) decided it needed to do more than just guide show-goers up and down 15 miles of aisles with booth after booth of aftermarket parts, and we suggested some kind of interactive mock proving ground. And so, with our guidance, the Truck Trend Proving Ground was born. This area sits outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center and takes up a city block of parking lots and is surrounded by various vendors and manufacturers.
Optima Battery, Rhino Off Road Vehicles, and Toyota were the big players of the area providing all sorts of hands-on and test-drive opportunities.
Toyota had a fleet of regular-cab 4x4 short-bed Tundras on hand, and we had a chance to get out on the course with one of the driving instructors and gave the new Tundra a good thrashing through the obstacles. To our surprise, the test track wasn't just designed with the lowest common denominator in mind. In fact, we managed to get a few of the course workers scrambling and had our passenger-seat Tundra guide pucker-up a few times. It didn't take him too long to figure out we knew what we were doing, especially given the fact we'd just spent an intensive week of truck testing for Motor Trend's Truck of the Year. (The Tundra was one of four competitors, along with the Super Duty, Chevrolet Silverado HD, and GMC Sierra HD. You'll have to wait for our announcement closer to the end of December or read the full story in the March/April 2008 issue of Truck Trend.)
Back on the Truck Trend Proving Ground test track, we tip our hats to the guys who built the course. With many years of course-building behind them, the best way they've come up with to make the course repeatable over the length of the four-day-long event is to get the dirt mounds and angles just the way they like, then cover everything with concrete. The weight of the trucks themselves aren't enough to damage the terrain, but the shells can be broken when cleanup crews bring the backhoes and dozers in to wipe the parking lot down at the end of the event.
The Tundras are guided on an outside course where obstacles are challenging, yet safe; however, there's an inner course where the more serious and nasty obstacles, many of which look undrivable, are designed for the super-serious Rhino ORV. These off-road competition crawlers basically amount to extreme rock-crawling tube-chassis buggies; in fact, the company has its own world-wide competitive event series where big money goes to winners who navigate some of the most extreme terrain Utah, Colorado, Tennessee, and several other states have to offer. If you get a chance to take a ride in one of these, do anything to get behind the wheel. And if you want one for your own, these off-road hot rods start around $20,000 and can be made in almost any configuration. To watch these things scale steep slopes or soak up holes and bumps at 30 mph is jaw-dropping. And all this gets done with a half-dozen vehicles out on the course all at the same time. Thankfully, the Rhinos were piloted by expert competition drivers.
It was an ideal break for us to escape the fluorescent lighting of a huge convention hall to play in some trucks. Judging by the length of lines that wrapped around the course most of the three days we were there, other show-goers enjoyed playing on the course, too. We're hoping to make the proving ground even bigger next year, with some possible exhibitions of other extreme vehicles as well. Maybe we should have one of these courses built outside our own offices? Hmm.
Photos by Melissa Spiering