WITH its next generation Focus expected to arrive in the spring, Ford has released details of the car’s punishing test programme, particularly its high altitude test schedule.
The new Focus has been tested in some of the most extreme locations on the planet. It’s been thrashed over frozen arctic lakes, hammered across the hottest deserts and driven overloaded up and down high Alpine passes to ensure impeccable reliability and dependability wherever it is sold.
One important factor when driving a car is altitude, and it affects cars in the same way it affects humans. The higher you climb, the less oxygen there is in the air and it becomes harder to breathe and function – the same is true of a car’s engine and associated equipment. And this is why Ford frequently heads to the Austrian Alps and to the Grossglockner High Alpine Road.
At 48km long, with 36 challenging bends and a maximum altitude of 2,504 metres this road is a mecca for motorcyclists and driving enthusiasts. It's also the perfect location to carry out altitude testing.
A regular of the test programme, vehicle integration engineer Bernd Herweling is part of a team that’s tasked with driving 200km up and down the hill – the punishing daily schedule for the new Focus.
Commenting on his work, Bernd says: “We’re here testing next generation Focus with a variety of powertrains, both petrol and diesel. We’re evaluating driveability on steep mountain roads from a customer perspective. The bottom line is we’re here to find out how the car performs driving up and down seriously steep hills.
“The Grossglockner is ideal for this. The road surface is very good. We use the first section for our test which is the biggest climb. It’s pretty much a constant 12 per cent gradient uphill all the way up to 2,400 metre mark. Up there the air is a lot thinner so the engine has to work harder. It’s a long route which allows us to generate a lot of data.”
On this particular day the team are testing a camouflaged Focus equipped an all-new 1.6-litre EcoBoost turbo petrol engine. Bernd drives while his colleague Markus Polle monitors a laptop, which displays the ambient temperature, oil temperature and a myriad of other readings. On the back seat there's a dozen or so plastic fuel cans filled with ballast, which weigh the same as three heavy adults.
Bernd pushes the Focus hard. Mostly he's in second or third gear but on some of the tighter bends he drops down to first. He overtakes one, two, three coaches and even some exotic sports cars, all the time gaining height and increasing speed.
Just a few minutes after leaving the valley floor, Bernd brakes to a halt at a lay by at the top of the pass, switches the engine off and erects a wind deflector around the bonnet to trap heat inside the engine compartment.
"It's a heat soak," he explains. "We want the engine to stay as hot as possible. Going uphill we’re carefully motoring the engine cooling system, radiator temperature, engine oil temperature and in the case of automatic models, transmission oil temperatures.
"We have more than 100 electronic channels on board which record how the vehicle is performing. It’s a lot of information. So far everything is working fine. My job is to drive quite fast but not to the limit – we could go a lot faster."
After five minutes it's time to head back down. Going up hill the clutch and engine suffer most but now it's the turn of the brakes to be punished. At the side of the road numerous signs warn drivers to select a low gear and use their brakes sparingly. Bernd, however, brakes very late for each bend.
As they near the bottom another camouflaged Focus towing a four-wheeled trailer sets off up the mountain. Bernd explains that the driver's brief is to stay at a steady 30kph all the way to the top, as there's little air flowing through the radiator so the cooling system faces a tough work-out.
"Trailer testing is very important," adds Bernd. "At sea level in this car you can pull up to 1,500kg with this powertrain. But up here in this rarefied atmosphere the engine is going to struggle. We are pushing the limits to see just how much weight it will pull up the hill and how the clutch copes with hill starts at altitude.
"The conditions are extreme but that's why we are here. If the car meets our performance targets in this environment, it'll cope with anything our customers ask of it."