Interesting article, although General Motors has been doing competitive teardowns…

Interesting article, although General Motors has been doing competitive teardowns for decades

As a engineering co-op student at GM in 1987, there was a room at the engine plant where I was working where they had laid out in painstaking detail the V6 engine from the then-new new Acura Legend plus a couple of others.

Tearing competing products apart is only of value if management gives you the development resources to take the lessons learned and actually make something superior. In the case of GM in the late 80s, that didn't really happen. The product that resulted from those efforts was the 3.4-liter "Twin-Dual-Cam" V6 that only lasted a few years in production. Instead of building a great engine from the ground up to be better, they hacked together a lump that was huge, heavy, and only had so-so power and fuel efficiency. 

It wasn't until GM did the so-called "high-feature" 3.6-liter V6 in the 2000s during Bob Lutz's reign as product development chief that GM really had a competitive modern engine design. 

General Motors is literally tearing its competition to bits
…so its 3D scanning can reverse-engineer others’ vehicles, increasing speed to market.

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This is going to be very interesting to watch over the coming months

Unlike the typical smoothly paved track, this is much more of a replica of real roads, at least here in Michigan

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Introducing our new test track: The Motown Mile http://Roadandtra.ac/6267wfk3

Introducing our new test track: the Motown Mile
No matter how good our words are, no matter how finite we can get on the description, eventually we need to run what we brung on a track. And now we have one. Introducing Road & Track’s own Motown Mile.

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