NASCAR team helps GM make vehicles for ‘the most demanding conditions’ — for the Army
A Concord site will soon produce vehicles for the U.S. Army with help from the Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR racing team, after plans for the center were initially paused because of the coronavirus.
GM Defense, a subsidiary of General Motors, will make agile, all-terrain troop carriers called Infantry Squad Vehicles as part of a $214.3 million Army contract the company was awarded last June.
The Concord facility will manufacture 649 ISVs in the first three years, GM Defense Chief Engineer Mark Dickens told the Observer. But the total production could involve as many as 2,065 vehicles if there is additional funding authorization over eight years, according to GM.
Production is expected to start in the spring.
The ISV architecture is based on the 2020 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck design and includes Chevrolet Performance race components. The vehicle is designed to bring “rapid mobility to the battlefield,” according to GM Defense.
Part of that agility comes from teaming up with Hendrick Motorsports, which used its experience developing race cars for high-risk environments to build the ISV frame. It’s strong enough to carry nine soldiers but light enough that it could have been used in a race car.
Hendrick’s role
Hendrick has more than 30 years of race car building expertise and is leaning into that history for its work on the GM Defense project.
It will build out the upper structure of the ISV with material called chrome-moly alloy steel that is highly durable and strong but lightweight, said Marshall Carlson, president of Hendrick Motorsports. That steel will help form areas to mount equipment, seating and the rollover protective structure.
“It’s the same type of material we use in NASCAR racing to compete and keep our drivers safe,” Carlson said.
Race cars are built with a slightly different design for each track on a weekly basis with up to a half-inch difference to get a competitive advantage, GM Defense Chief Engineer Mark Dickens said. So being able to build a large structure of the ISV that is strong enough to withstand tough conditions makes partnering with a NASCAR team ideal, he said.
COVID-19 changed plans
The 75,000-square-foot Charlotte Technical Center at the International Business Park, off Interstate 85 in Concord, was expected to open by the middle of last year.
GM purchased the property in December 2019 for over $10 million, Observer news partner WBTV reported.
The site was intended to focus on GM performance and support auto racing engineering developments in the Charlotte region, long a NASCAR hub and home to Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord.
But plans changed because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Angela Ambrose, GM Defense vice president of government affair and communications. And, the center will soon be renamed too, she said.
Milford Proving Ground in Michigan has been producing GM Defense’s ISVs, Ambrose said, but it wasn’t intended to be the final production location and lacked the space needed to ramp up to full production.
The Concord center was identified as the ideal location, Ambrose said. It’s minutes from key GM partner Hendrick Motorsports and not far from U.S. Army bases, she said.
Fort Bragg in North Carolina will be the first to receive ISV deliveries, Dickens said.
Renovations at the plant began last month and are expected to continue into early spring, with the production line set to start in April, according to GM Authority blog.
GM will hire about 20 technicians, Ambrose said. The number of jobs could increase with the demand to build more ISVs, she said.
About the vehicle
Tim Herrick, interim president of GM Defense, said the ISV is a first-of-its-kind tactical wheeled vehicle.
The 5,000-pound ISV is light enough to be loaded from a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter and compact enough to fit inside a CH-47 Chinook helicopter for air transport, according to GM Defense.
The Concord production facility is slated to produce four ISVs a month at first, Ambrose said, and up to 14 vehicles per month in the remaining years of the contract.
The ISV is assembled similar to how a race car is built, Dickens said. That’s part of why the Charlotte region is ideal to draw from local expertise and talent.
And Carlson, the Hendrick Motorsports president, said some of the same capabilities used in motorsports align with defense customer needs like innovation, efficiency, speed of implementation and reliability.
“This vehicle,” he said, “is going to be used in the most demanding conditions.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 6:30 AM with the headline "NASCAR team helps GM make vehicles for ‘the most demanding conditions’ — for the Army."