Chapter 7


Some thirty miles outside Detroit, occupying a half thousand acres of superb Michigan countryside, the auto company's proving ground lay like a Balkan state bristling with defended borders. Only one entrance to the proving ground existed - through a security-policed double barrier, remarkably similar to East-West Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie. Here, visitors were halted to have credentials examined; no one, without prearranged authority, got in.

Apart from this entry point, the entire area was enclosed by a high, chain-link fence, patrolled by guards. Inside the fence, trees and other protective planting formed a visual shield against watchers from outside.

What the company was guarding were some of its more critical secrets.

Among them: experiments with new cars, trucks, and their components, as well as drive-to-destruction performance tests on current models.

The testing was carried out on some hundred and fifty miles of roads-routes to nowhere ranging from specimens of the very best to the absolute worst or most precipitous in the world. Among the latter was a duplicate of San Francisco's horrendously steep Filbert Street, appropriately named (so San Franciscans say) since only nuts drive down it. A Belgian block road jolted every screw, weld, and rivet in a car, and set drivers' teeth chattering. Even rougher, and used for truck trials, was a replica of an African game trail, with tree roots, rocks, and mud holes.

One road section, built on level ground, was known as Serpentine Alley.

This was a series of sharp S-bends, closely spaced and absolutely flat, so that absence of any banking in the turns strained a car to its limits when cornering at high speed.

At the moment, Adam Trenton was hurling an Orion around Serpentine Alley at 60 mph.

Tires screamed savagely, and smoked, as the car flung hard left, then right, then left again. Each time, centrifugal force strained urgently, protestingly, against the direction of the turn. To the three occupants it seemed as if the car might roll over at any moment, even though knowledge told them that it shouldn't.

Adam glanced behind him. Brett DeLosanto, sitting centrally in the rear seat, was belted in, as well as bracing himself by his arms on either side.

The designer called over the seatback, "My liver and spleen just switched sides. I'm counting on the next bend to get them back."

Beside Adam, Ian Jameson, a slight, sandyhaired Scot from Engineering, sat imperturbably. Jameson was undoubtedly thinking what Adam realized - that there was no necessity for them to be going around the turns at all; professional drivers had already put the Orion through grueling tests there which it survived handily. The trio's real purpose at the proving ground today was to review an NVH problem (the initials were engineerese for Noise, Vibration, and Harshness) which prototype Orions had developed at very high speed. But on their way to the fast track they had passed the entry to Serpentine Alley, and Adam swung on to it first, hoping that throwing the car around would release some of his own tension, which he had continued to be aware of since his departure from the press session an hour or two earlier.

The tension, which started early this morning, had occurred more frequently of late. So a few weeks ago Adam made an appointment with a physician who probed, pressed, performed assorted tests, and finally told him there was nothing wrong organically except, possibly, too much acid in his system. The doctor then talked vaguely of "ulcer personality," the need to stop worrying, and added a kindergarten bromide, "A hill is only as steep as it looks to the man climbing it."

While Adam listened impatiently, wishing that medics would assume more knowledge and intelligence on the part of patients, the doctor pointed out that the human body had its own built-in warning devices and suggested easing up for a while, which Adam already knew was impossible this year. The doctor finally got down to what Adam had come for and prescribed Librium capsules with a recommended dosage. Adam promptly exceeded the dosage, and continued to. He also failed to tell the doctor that he was taking Valium, obtained elsewhere. Today, Adam had swallowed several pills, including one just before leaving downtown, but without discernible effect. Now, since the S-turns had done nothing to release his tension either, he surreptitiously transferred another pill from a pocket to his mouth.

The action reminded him that he still hadn't told Erica, either about the visit to the doctor, or the pills, which he kept in his briefcase, out of sight.

Near the end of Serpentine Alley, Adam swung the car sharply, letting the speed drop only slightly before heading for the track which was used for high-speed runs. Outside, the trees, meadows, and connecting roads sped by. The speedometer returned to 60, then edged to 65.

With one hand, Adam rechecked the tightness of his own lap straps and shoulder harness. Without turning his head, he told the others, "Okay, let's shake this baby out."

They hurtled on the fast track, sweeping past another car, their speed still climbing. It was 70 mph, and Adam caught a glimpse of a face as the driver of the other car glanced sideways.

Ian Jameson craned left to watch the speedometer needle, now touching 75. The sandy-haired engineer had been a key figure in studying the Orion's present NVH problem.

"We'll hear it any moment," Jameson said.

Speed was 78. The wind, largely of their own creating, roared as they flew around the track. Adam had the accelerator floored. Now he touched the automatic speed control, letting the computer take over, and removed his foot. Speed crept up. It passed 80.

"Here she comes," Jameson said. As he spoke, the car shuddered violently - an intense pulsation, shaking everything, including occupants.

Adam found his vision blurring slightly from the rapid movement.

Simultaneously a metallic hum rose and fell.

The engineer said, "Right on schedule." He sounded complacent, Adam thought, as if he would have been disappointed had the trouble not appeared.

"At fair grounds Brett DeLosanto raised his voice to a shout to make himself heard; his words came through unevenly because of the shaking.

"At fair grounds, people pay money for a ride like this."

"And if we left it in," Adam said, "most drivers would never know about it. Not many take their cars up to eighty."

Ian Jameson said, "But some do."

Adam conceded gloomily: it was true. A handful of madcap drivers would hit eighty, and among them one or two might be startled by the sudden vibration, then lose control, killing or maiming themselves and others.

Even without accident, the NVH effect could become known, and people like Emerson Vale would make the most of it. It was a few freak accidents at high speed, Adam recalled, with drivers who over- or understeered in emergencies, which had killed the Corvair only a few years ago. And although by the time Ralph Nader published his now-famous indictment of the Corvair, early faults had been corrected, the car had still gone to a precipitate end under the weight of publicity which Nader generated.

Adam, and others in the company who knew about the high-speed shake, had no intention of allowing a similar episode to mar the Orion's record.

It was a reason why the company high command was being close-mouthed so that rumors of the trouble did not leak outside. A vital question at this moment was: How could the shake be eliminated and what would it cost? Adam was here to find out and, because of the urgency, had authority to make decisions.

He took back control from the car's computer and allowed the speed to fall off to 20 mph. Then, twice more, at differing rates of acceleration he took it up to 80. Each time, both the vibration and the point at which it occurred were identical.

"There's a difference in sheet metal on this car." Adam remembered that the Orion he was driving was an early prototype, handmade - as were all prototypes so far - because assembly line manufacture had not yet started.

"Makes no difference to the effect," Ian Jameson declared flatly. "We've had an exact Orion out here, another on the dynamometer. They all do it.

Same speed, same NVH."

"It feels like a woman having an orgasm," Brett said. "Sounds like it, too." He asked the engineer, "Does it do any harm?"

"As far as we can tell, no."

"Then it seems a shame to take it out."

Adam snapped, "For Christ's sake, cut the stupidity! Of course we have to take it out! If it were an appearance problem, you wouldn't be so goddamn smug."

"Well, well," Brett said. "Something else appears to be vibrating."

They had left the fast track. Abruptly, Adam braked the car, skidding so that all three were thrown forward against their straps. He turned onto a grass shoulder. As the car stopped, he unbuckled, then got out and lit a cigarette. The others followed.

Outside the car, Adam shivered slightly. The air was briskly cool, fall leaves were blowing in a gusty wind, and the sun, which had been out earlier, had disappeared behind an overcast of gray nimbostratus. Through trees, he could see a lake, its surface ruffled bleakly.

Adam pondered the decision he had to make. He was aware it was a tough one for which he would be blamed - justly or unjustly - if it went wrong.

Ian Jameson broke the uncomfortable silence. "We're satisfied that the effect is induced by tire and road surfaces when one or the other becomes in phase with body harmonics, so the vibration is natural body frequency."

In other words, Adam realized, there was no structural defect in the car.

He asked, "Can the vibration be overcome?"

"Yes," Jameson said. "We're sure of that, also that you can go one of two ways. Either redesign the cowl side structure and underbody torque boxes" - he filled in engineering details or add biases and reinforcement."

"Hey!" Brett was instantly alert. "That first one means exterior body changes. Right?"

"Right," the engineer acknowledged. "They'd be needed at the lower body side near the front door cut and rocker panel areas."

Brett looked gloomy, as well he might, Adam thought. It would require a crash redesign and testing program at a time when everyone believed the Orion design was fixed and final. He queried, "And the add-ons?"

"We've experimented, and there'd be two pieces - a front floor reinforcement and a brace under the instrument panel." The engineer described the brace which would be out of sight, extending from the cowl side structure on one side, to the steering column, thence to the cowl on the opposite side.

Adam asked the critical question. "Cost?"

"You won't like it." The engineer hesitated, knowing the reaction his next words would produce. "About five dollars."

Adam groaned. "God Almighty!"

He was faced with a frustrating choice. Whichever route they went would be negative and costly. The engineer's first alternative - redesign - would be less expensive, costing probably half a million to a million dollars in retooling. But it would create delays, and the Orion's introduction would be put off three to six months which, in itself, could be disastrous for many reasons.

On the other hand, on a million cars, cost of the two add-ons - the floor reinforcement and brace - would be five million dollars, and it was expected that many more Orions than a million would be built and sold. Millions of dollars to be added to production expense, to say nothing of lost profit, and all for an item wholly negative! In auto construction, five dollars was a major sum, and auto manufacturers thought normally in pennies, shaving two cents here, a nickel there, necessary because of the immense total numbers involved. Adam said in deep disgust, "Goddam!"

He glanced at Brett. The designer said, "I guess it isn't funny."

Adam's outburst in the car was not the first clash they had had since the Orion project started. Sometimes it had been Brett who flared up. But through everything so far they had managed to remain friends. It was as well, because there was a new project ahead of them, at the moment codenamed Farstar.

Ian Jameson announced, "If you want to drive over to the lab, we've a car with the add-ons for you to see."

Adam nodded sourly. "Let's get on with it."


***

Brett DeLosanto looked upward incredulously. "You mean that hunk of scrap, and the other, 'll cost five bucks!"

He was staring at a steel strip running across the underside of an Orion, and secured by bolts.

Adam Trenton, Brett, and Ian Jameson were inspecting the proposed floor reinforcement from an inspection area beneath a dynamometer, so that the whole of the car's underside was open to their view. The dynamometer, an affair of metal plates, rollers, and instrumentation, with a vague resemblance to a monstrous service station hoist, allowed a car to be operated as if on the road, while viewed from any angle.

They had already inspected, while above, the other cowl-to-steering column-to-cowl brace.

Jameson conceded, "Possibly you could save a few cents from cost, but no more, after allowing for material, machining, then bolt fittings and installation labor."

The engineer's manner, a kind of pedantic detachment as if cost and economics were really none of his concern, continued to irritate Adam, who asked, "How much is Engineering protecting itself? Do we really need all that?"

It was a perennial question from a product planner to an engineer. The product men regularly accused engineers of building in, everywhere, greater strength margins than necessary, thus adding to an automobile's cost and weight while diminishing performance. Product Planning was apt to argue: If you let the Iron Rings have their way, every car would have the strength of Brooklyn Bridge, ride like an armored truck, and last as long as Stonehenge. Taking an adversary view, engineers declaimed: Sure, we allow margins because if something fails we're the ones who take the rap. If product planners did their own engineering, they'd achieve light weight - most likely with a balsawood chassis and tinfoil for the engine block.

"There's no engineering protection there." It was Jameson's turn to be huffy. "We've reduced the NVH to what we believe is an acceptable level.

If we went a more complicated route - which would cost more - we could probably take it out entirely. So far we haven't."

Adam said noncommittally, "We'll see what this does."

Jameson led the way as the trio climbed a metal stairway from the inspection level to the main floor of the Noise and Vibration Laboratory above.

The lab - a building at the proving ground which was shaped like an airplane hangar and divided into specialist work areas, large and small - was busy as usual with NVH conundrums tossed there by various divisions of the company. One problem now being worked on urgently was a high-pitched, girlish-sounding scream emitted by a new-type brake on diesel locomotives. Industrial Marketing had enjoined sternly: The stopping power must be retained, but locomotives should sound as if being braked, not raped.

Another poser - this from Household Products Division - was an audible click in a kitchen oven control clock; a competitor's clock, though less efficient, was silent. Knowing that the public distrusted new or different sounds and that sales might suffer if the click remained, Household Products had appealed to the NVH lab to nix the click but not the clock.

Automobiles, however, produced the bulk of the laboratory's problems.

A recent one stemmed from revised styling of an established model car.

The new body produced a drum sound while in motion; tests showed that the sound resulted from a windshield which had been reshaped. After weeks of hit-and-miss experimentation, NVH engineers eliminated the drum noise by introducing a crinkle in the car's metal floor. No one, including the engineers, knew exactly why the crinkle stopped the windshield drumming; the important thing was - it did.

The present stage of Orion testing in the lab had been set up on the dynamometer. Hence the car could be operated at any speed, either manually or by remote control, for hours, days, or weeks continuously, yet never move from its original position on the machine's rollers.

The Orion which they had looked at from beneath was ready to go.

Stepping over the steel plates of the dynamometer, Adam Trenton and Ian Jameson climbed inside, Adam at the wheel.

Brett DeLosanto was no longer with them. Having satisfied himself that the proposed add-ons would not affect the car's outward appearance, Brett had returned outside to review a minor change made recently in the Orion grille. Designers liked to see results of their work out of doors - "on the grass," as they put it. Sometimes, in open surroundings and natural light, a design had unexpected visual effects, compared with its appearance in a studio.

When the Orion, for example, was first viewed in direct sunlight the front grille had unexpectedly appeared black instead of bright silver, as it should. A change of angle in the grille had been necessary to correct it.

A girl technician in a white coat came out from a glass-lined control booth alongside the car. She inquired, "Is there any special kind of road you'd like, Mr. Trenton?"

"Give him a bumpy ride," the engineer said. "Let's take one from California."

"Yes, sir." The girl returned to the booth, then leaned out through the doorway, holding a magnetic tape reel in her hand. "This is State Route 17, between Oakland and San Jose." Going back into the booth, she pressed the reel onto a console and passed the tape end through a take-up spool.

Adam turned the ignition key. The Orion's engine sprang to life.

The tape now turning inside the glass booth would, Adam knew, transfer the real road surface, electronically, to the dynamometer rollers beneath the car. The tape was one of many in the lab's library, and all had been made by sensitive recording vehicles driven over routes in North America and Europe. Thus, actual road conditions, good and bad, could be reproduced instantly for test and study.

He put the Orion in drive and accelerated.

Speed rose quickly to 50 mph. The Orion's wheels and the dynamometer rollers were racing, the car itself standing still. At the same time, Adam felt an insistent pounding from below.

"Too many people think California freeways are great," Ian Jameson observed. "It surprises them when we demonstrate how bad they can be."

The speedometer showed 65.

Adam nodded. Auto engineers, he knew, were critical of California road building because the state roads - due to the absence of frost - were not made deep. The lack of depth allowed concrete slabs to become depressed at the center and curled and broken at the edges - a result of pounding by heavy trucks. Thus, when a car came to the end of a slab, in effect it fell off and bounced onto the next. The process caused continuous bumps and vibrations which cars had to be engineered to absorb.

The Orion's speed nudged 80. Jameson said, "Here's where it happens."

As he spoke, a hum and vibration - additional to the roughness of the California freeway - extended through the car. But the effect was slight, the hum low-pitched, vibration minor. The NVH would no longer be startling to a car's occupants, as it had been on the test track earlier.

Adam queried, "And that's all of it?"

"That's all that's left," Ian Jameson assured him. "The braces take the rest out. As I said, we consider what remains to be at an acceptable level." Adam allowed speed to drop off, and the engineer added, "Let's try it on a smooth road."

With another tape on the control console - a portion of Interstate 80 in Illinois - the road unevenness disappeared while the hum and vibration seemed correspondingly lower.

"We'll try one more road," Jameson said, "a really tough one." He signaled to the lab assistant in the booth, who smiled.

As Adam accelerated, even at 60 mph the Orion jolted alarmingly. Jameson announced, "This is Mississippi - U.S. 90, near Biloxi. The road wasn't good to start with, then Hurricane Camille loused it up completely. The portion we're on now still hasn't been fixed. Naturally, no one would do this speed there unless they had suicide in mind."

At 80 mph the road, transmitted through the dynamometer, was so bad that the car's own vibration was undetectable. Ian Jameson looked pleased.

As speed came off, he commented, "People don't realize how good our engineering has to be to cope with all kinds of roads, including plenty of others like that."

Jameson was off again, Adam thought, in his abstract engineer's world.

Of more practical importance was the fact that the Orion's NVH problem could be solved. Adam had already decided that the add-on route, despite its appalling cost, was the one they would have to travel, rather than delay the Orion's debut. Of course, the company's executive vice-president, Hub Hewitson, who regarded the Orion as his own special baby, would go through the ceiling when he heard about the five dollars added cost. But he would learn to live with it, as Adam had - almost - already.

He got out of the car, Ian Jameson following. On the engineer's instructions, Adam left the motor running. Now, the girl in the booth took over, operating the Orion by remote control. At 80 on the dynamometer, the vibration was no more serious outside than it had been within.

Adam asked Jameson, "You're sure the bracing will stand up to long use?"

"No question about it. We've put it through every test. We're satisfied."

So was Jameson, Adam thought; too damn satisfied. The engineer's detachment - it seemed like complacency - still irritated him. "Doesn't it ever bother you," Adam asked, "that everything you people do here is negative? You don't produce anything. You only take things out, eliminate."

"Oh, we produce something." Jameson pointed to the dynamometer rollers, still turning swiftly, impelled by the Orion's wheels. "See those? They're connected to a generator; so are the other dynamometers in the lab. Every time we operate a car, the rollers generate electricity. We're coupled in to Detroit Edison, and we sell the power to them." He looked challengingly at Adam. "Sometimes I think it's as useful as a few things which have come out of Product Planning."

Adam smiled, conceding. "But not the Orion."

"No," Jameson said. I guess we all have hopes for that."

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