For a few months now, I've been hearing credible rumors of pits and trenches filled with 50's and 60's cars and engines being discovered as the former (as of today) GM proving grounds in Mesa AZ are being cleaned up to be made into a hotel and mall. I've heard of a barn find, but what about a trench find? Harley Earl in Mesa: (Come on, picture the Firebird 1 in Satin black with red steelies and wide whites!) Story: The last car has long since taken its last test lap, and most employees have already moved to a new facility in Yuma For the past few weeks, perhaps a half-dozen people have been packing for General Motors' final departure from Mesa, bringing a quiet end to an era when American automotive icons like Corvette, Firebird and Camaro had to do or die on a 5-mile test track in the brutal desert heat. Today, GM will quietly turn out the lights at its vast Desert Proving Ground in southeast Mesa, ending more than 56 years of operations there. The closure is only coincidental with the financial collapse that pushed GM last week to take the once-unthinkable step of declaring bankruptcy. Not only have times changed in the car-testing business, but urban sprawl has finally crept up to the Mesa site. What once was ideal land use for a 20th-century industry is no longer appropriate for the new century's aspirations. But, oh, what a tale the past century can tell. Roc Arnett remembers when the Proving Ground was shrouded in secrecy, hiding its operations behind barbed wire and tall earthen berms. It was a special thrill to spot a heavily disguised prototype out on the open road for testing. "I can remember . . . learning to drive, and it would be sport for us to find those future cars and their test cars going down U.S. 60," said Arnett, now president of the civic and business coalition that will be instrumental in planning the future of the site. "Back then, U.S. 60 was Main Street (in Mesa). As high-school kids, we'd follow those things - 'Is that going to be a Corvette?' 'Is that going to be an Impala?' " It could have been almost any vehicle GM developed over the past six decades, including some that never made it to market. There was the Firebird, a brainchild of legendary designer Harley Earl that first zoomed around the circular track in the mid-'50s. Propelled by a kerosene-powered turbine engine, it had a titanium body and a revolutionary suspension system that eliminated springs and shock absorbers. A generation later, there was the solar-powered Sunraycer, which set a world electric-car speed record of nearly 75 mph. Although those technologies never arrived in the showrooms, many of the improvements in GM vehicles first went through their paces in the hellish heat, dust and deliberately miserable driving conditions at the Proving Ground. Jack Sellers, a Chandler councilman, spent his entire professional career there, including almost 20 years as facilities manager, before retiring. "The facility played a much larger role in a lot of things that GM did than many people realize," Sellers said. One frequent early visitor was Zora Arkus-Duntov, a GM executive known as the "Father of the Corvette" because he advocated saving the now-legendary sports car when sales faltered in the mid-'50s. Most of the Proving Ground's work was mundane, such as seeing how brakes, tires and other parts would hold up in the heat. Sometimes, components wound up in other companies' products. The Mesa site helped develop transmissions for Rolls-Royce, for instance. Employment fluctuated over the years. In the mid-'90s, GM had about 400 employees there, but Sellers said that during peak testing seasons, there could be as many as 1,200 people on site as GM's various divisions sent people to monitor work on their respective makes and models. 'It is kind of sad' "On one level, it is sad to me to see them leave," Arnett said. "It is kind of sad to see a name and a participant in the East Valley come to a close." But because GM's operations have dwindled, Arnett said, the loss will not have a significant economic impact. The handwriting has been on the Proving Ground's walls for more than a decade. First, Sellers said, the site itself was becoming obsolete. "The development cycle of vehicles just kept being compressed," he said. Early on, it could take four or five years to develop a vehicle. Now, it's as little as 18 months; and that could leave only a narrow window for hot-weather testing in Mesa. "All of a sudden, when you needed to do hot-weather validation work on a vehicle, it might be January or February - not hot enough," Sellers said. Second, there was an eastward-rolling tsunami of suburban sprawl. As early as the mid-'90s, developers were coveting GM's land and surrounding areas near the former Williams Air Force Base, now Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, for new housing projects. Despite the interest, GM's presence in the Valley seemed secure when, in 1998, the company said it would spend $52 million to upgrade the Proving Ground. Only two years later, GM announced it would abandon Mesa in favor of a year-round hot-weather site in Mexico. That didn't pan out, and Mesa jockeyed with GM and Maricopa County for much of this decade over whether the Proving Ground would become another sea of red-tile roofs. In 2004, GM sold the southern portion to Phoenix businessman William Levine. Two years later, the northern 5 square miles was sold to Scottsdale-based DMB Associates for $265 million. GM has been leasing the land as it readies a new site near Yuma, a move it announced in 2007. The Yuma operation is a joint venture with the U.S. Army designed to save money for both the company and the military. Plans for the southern part of GM's site have been slow to emerge. But for the northern portion, it has been pedal to the metal. Within months of buying the land, DMB brought in nationally known experts to talk about how its property could become the hub of an "aerotropolis," a city anchored by the nearby Gateway Airport, with high-rise offices housing corporate headquarters and research facilities. DMB is already cleaning up two old landfills and will spend about $2.6 million ripping up 72 miles of test tracks. And on the far northern end of land still occupied by the 5-mile-long circular test track, DMB announced last summer there will be a Gaylord resort and conference center, the first step, it hopes, into a new kind of future, one born from a place where yesterday's cars of the future roared to life.
Thought I would share a story about this even though it is an old thread. I met a guy at the SoCal second Saturday swap meet here in Phoenix yesterday that worked for many years at the proving grounds in Mesa. Of course I asked him about the rumors of cars being buried out there. His response was this is no rumor, and he was actually in charge of this operation. He said there were a lot of strange prototype cars that would lay around in the warehouses for years, and they would eventually get buried. They had a Euclid digger and would dig a hole as deep as the loader itself. Then they would push the car in the hole, drive the loader over it till it was flat, cover it in dirt then put another car on top and keep going till the hole was filled. He said there were lots of Corvettes and odd looking cars made from fiberglass. He had a chance to drive a car he said looked like an early 60s Impala made from fiberglass that had no steering wheel. It was controlled by something buried in the ground and the car would follow it. There was a guy in the back seat that could shut it down if something went wrong, but he said it just went right around the track and steered itself. They started bringing in contract labor rather than regular employees and he said it was the end for him. He took an early retirement and was happy to get out. I went by there yesterday, and even though you can't see much, you can see mountians of pavement where they have ripped up the tracks. If they are going to develop it, it sure looks like a slow process. Seems like a real shame to destroy a place like this, but all things change with progress, and the history isn't of any interest to developers.
Kinda like G.M.'s area 51.......... but........ who knows? As long as they didn't find any little burnt bodies.
In 2008, I looked on google earth to see the big pile of cars that I posted pics in the Arizona thread a few days ago....couldn't see anything that looked like it from up in the sky, but there was this huge pile of cars in the ravine. I really doubt you'd see anything on google earth about what exactly is going on at the old proving grounds. (I did get to visit once about 30 years ago)
and ford thinks they have somenew shit cause it parks it self! dam how would ya like to find that chevy at the swap meet for sale!
start digging even crap would be fun to find General Motors Proving Grounds , 13303 S Ellsworth Rd, my mapquest link went somewhere else ???\ i just google mapped it they have some stuff hidden that area should not hide anything ..
Don't know how its done in Arizona, but when I bought and sold my old place in Oregon the seller had to disclose any known buried debris. On any old industrial site what might be buried and impact and responsibility on dealing with ground and water pollution are often deal breakers. And all such known issues are recorded on plot maps. And those maps can be viewed at the county level. My old property had the remains of a cow milking stalls foundation and some buried rubble. All plainly documented and available in my case at city hall. So if there is anything buried out there, it would be documented. Is the site posted NO TRESPASSING ?
Well, if there is anything left, it doesn't sound like they were left in too good of shape before they were buried.
Well, there's rumors of GM Execs wrecking test cars while drunk, and burying the evidence..........but, I'm not naming names.........
Now this ,from a person who worked there- sounds more like the naked truth of the matter,if ya know how human tendencies run.......
Much easier to simply dig a hole, smash the car with the excavator, and fill the hole than to take the time to dismantle it piece by piece. They likely didn't have a need to save parts for future use, or want the "trade secrets" of what they were developing going to Ford or Mopar. It's not like they didn't have a lack of barren land to dig automotive graves. I had a classmate who'd done internships with GM during college and went to work as a handling test engineer after graduation. She did performance testing on the C6 Z06 first thing out of school. Now that would've been a fun job.
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