A rare prototype of Ford's exciting new Territory was briefly spotted on the beaches of Fraser Island last week.
The vehicle was undergoing one of a series of gruelling, real-world validation tests by experts from Ford's product development and manufacturing departments.
The Territory program started four years ago as a result of market research identifying a need for a vehicle combining the best attributes of a large 4x4, a family car and a people mover.
"There was clearly an unmet consumer need for a product that suited the urban lifestyle on week days, but could also facilitate an active outdoor lifestyle on weekends and holidays," said Product Development Vice President Trevor Worthington.
"Customers told us they wanted a product with the image and utility of a 4x4 but without truck-like handling. In essence they wanted a vehicle with car-like dynamics of ride, handling and manoeuverability.
"Any successful product must start and finish with the customer and their wants, and Territory was created in response to that unmet market need."
The prototype pictured at Fraser Island is the culmination of numerous exhaustive market research clinics, used to ensure every detail is designed to meet customer expectations of appearance, function, package and ergonomics.
"Once the customer needs were understood, vehicle level targets were defined and cascaded down into system and component targets."
Worthington said the first off-tool prototypes rolled off Ford's Broadmeadows production line earlier this year.
They have undergone extensive testing at Ford's You Yangs Proving Ground as well as real-world testing in places as diverse as the frozen lakes of Sweden, the West Australian Pilbara region, urban roads around Sydney and Melbourne and along the beaches of Fraser Island in Queensland.
The confirmation prototypes will go on to complete more than 2 million kilometres of testing before Territory goes into production. Ford engineers have already completed more than 3200 system verification tests, in addition to approximately 9000 component tests to evaluate Territory's compliance with customer requirements.
Prototype testing follows extensive Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) testing. Territory has already totalled more than 20 million virtual kilometres in Ford's supercomputers, taking up more than 2 billion computer Central Processing Unit (CPU) seconds.
Ford's CAE team used the supercomputer centre at Ford headquarters in Dearborn, which uses machines similar to those used by NASA and the CIA.
The Ford supercomputers represent a combined memory capacity of more than 1.5 million megabytes – or about 6000 state of the art Pentium IV home computers.
That processing power has allowed the Territory CAE team to run more than 1900 virtual crash simulations, each taking around 12 hours. A home computer would need a year to run the same simulation, and a mathematician working with pen and paper would require more than 16 million years.
"Territory represents a huge challenge for the engineering fraternity at Ford and these tests are a vital part of meeting customer requirements.
"We have been extremely pleased with the on-road results so far," Worthington said.
The all-new Ford Territory will go on sale in 2004. Ford is already showing some details at
www.ford.com.au
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