Hiding on a road near you
Camouflaged cars are a vital tool of the new model testing process.
But thanks to professional spy photographers and rev-heads with camera phones, it is becoming harder to keep secrets. Cars regularly appear in newspapers and magazines months or years ahead of time because of eagle-eyed snappers.
Car companies spend years designing and engineering new models. Ford and Holden, like all carmakers around the world, spend months testing prototypes at test facilities, such as those at the You Yangs and Lang Lang outside Melbourne. But there comes a time when the test mules must make their way into the wider world for testing on proper roads.
That’s when the camouflage team steps in. It’s their job to hide the new lines of the prototypes from prying eyes and camera lenses.
Hiding the distinctive new look of a new model is crucial in ensuring the vehicle makes an impact when it reaches the showrooms.
The process begins when the cars come off the drawing board and actually become metal.
At this stage the company’s camouflage team meets with the designers to decided how best to hide the car’s new features.
This often turns into a negotiation between the desires of the marketing and design departments and the needs of the engineering division.
Marketing wants to keep as much hidden as possible, to keep the surprises in store for the official unveiling. Engineering wants as few extra pieces on the car as possible, to make sure all the test data is as accurate as possible.
Adding the camouflage can change the aerodynamics, handling, acoustics, cooling and comfort of the car, so a balance must be struck between the two groups. Once that compromise has been reached, the camouflage team goes to work on the cars. The main tools used are stickers, car bras and padded covers.
The stickers are an interesting story in themselves. Black-and-white checkerboard has been the usual pattern most companies use — including Ford and Holden — but in recent years a lot of work has been done to improve the shape of stickers, to make them even more effective.
Aside from trying triangles and other simple shapes, companies are using fish-shaped diamonds and a new style called “Flimmies”.
Flimmies are designed to create a flickering effect, to trick camera lenses. Then comes the padded bodywork covers for large areas such as the front and rear of the cars.
“The in-house team does the checkerboard work,” Holden spokesman John Lindsay says.
“We get the bras done by an outside company. They are custom-made like a suit. It’s measured just like you get at a tailor.”
That’s no surprise given the front and back of cars are usually the most crucial design elements. But having working headlights and tail-lights are an absolute must.
The car, simply, has to drive on public roads, so a close-fitting bra is a vital part of the disguise.
The stickers and padding break up the lines of the cars the designers have carefully crafted.
In some cases the stickers serve the dual purpose of concealing the design and misdirecting the media.
For example, on the new Holden VE Ute the company deliberately put a line of tape down the middle of the car to make sure its new one-piece side panel remained a secret. Carmakers also try to throw the media off the scent by using the wrong badges and numberplates.
Though this may sound straightforward, and as simple as putting on a car bra and some stickers, it is anything but when you consider the size of the operation. For example, over the course of the VE Commodore program, 200 cars were used. That’s an awful lot of stickers.
One of the biggest problems for carmakers is that professional spy photographers know where the testing happens and can stake out important venues. Even though most Commodores and Falcons will never see snow, that doesn’t stop both companies undertaking cold-weather testing at Mt Hotham and surrounding areas.
The same applies to the manufacturers’ hot-weather testing in the Northern Territory.
But in some cases the camouflage serves only to make the car attract more attention. That was the case with the Chevrolet Camaro.
The camouflage made the car stand out on Melbourne roads, which led, predictably, to a flood of amateur photos on the web.
Bob Lutz, the product development chief of General Motors, was sent a letter by a member of the public asking why the car was so heavily camouflaged given that GM had already shown the car at several motor shows, and it had had a starring role in the movie Transformers.
Lutz realised that it made little sense to hide the subtle changes to the production model and told his engineers to remove the camouflage from the test cars.
Ford, meanwhile, started its own trend of releasing “official spy photos” in the build-up to a model being unveiled. The photos showed thinly disguised versions of the car to act as a teaser to the media and public. The company first tried it with the Territory and again with the FG Falcon.
Ford included the Falcon photos as part of a CD of images of its new testing facility in Geelong released only months before the official unveiling of the car in Melbourne.
Hyundai followed by releasing a photograph of a disguised i30 in the lead-up to its local launch.
Despite all the hard work of the camouflage teams, it is getting harder to keep things secret.
The advent of both camera phones and the internet have really changed the nature of the game. In the past, carmakers could go out into the world confident there wouldn’t be a camera in every other car they pass.
But nowadays, every second person has a camera in their mobile phone.
So the chances of a disguised car not passing a camera are remote, to say the least.
And if a quality image is snapped on a phone camera or digital camera, the shot can be published on the internet within hours.
If you’ve seen a new car testing in disguise, let us know.
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- Herald Sun
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