New Test Centre of Hyundai at Nurburgring

The South Korean automaker, Hyundai is doing its final preparations before entering into its new vehicle testing centre located at the iconic Nurburgring track in Germany. The purpose-built facility will be a permanent base at the track for the company, and the dedicated resource will be appointed for evaluating its vehicles on what is widely recognised as the toughest such circuit in the world.

The new centre will be completed by August 2013, and the centre has been specifically designed to meet Hyundai's needs. Covering four floors and 3.622 m2, it will include new workshops, office space and a VIP hospitality area, wrapped in a unique exterior glass and metallic finish. The new facility provides a natural extension to Hyundai’s European research and development infrastructure.  Its current R&D centre in Russelsheim, Germany, was established in 2003 and is home to the company’s European powertrain, tuning and evaluation divisions.  Each of these will have easy access to the Nurburgring, enabling them to complete a greater number of vehicle assessments per year, including Hyundai’s arduous ‘accelerated durability tests’ which simulate up to 180,000 km of severe driving in a matter of weeks, to provide valuable data on a wide range of parameters.

Allan Rushforth, Senior Vice President and COO of Hyundai Motor Europe, said, “Quality is one of Hyundai’s core values and it is key to achieving customer satisfaction.  The Nurburgring is the ultimate location to test vehicle durability, and we’re able to apply what we learn there to all of our vehicle development projects". He further added that “Our new facility will increase our testing capacity, bringing direct benefits to our customers in terms of vehicle quality and performance.”

The new test centre will provide an additional capacity for testing, which will enable Hyundai during 2013 to complete accelerated durability tests on 11 vehicles, as well as assessing steering, suspension, ride and handling characteristics to produce set-ups suited to the preferences of European drivers.