Spy Shots
If you live near Detroit, Los Angeles, Death Valley or the Arctic Circle, more than likely you've seen strange cars on the road covered in black tape and what appear to be plastic body panels. The vehicles may be covered with wires and gauges, but without distinctive manufacturer badges. These are manufacturer test cars. As a critical part of the design and development process, automotive manufacturers subject their vehicles to rigorous testing over many months in the harshest climates and the most brutal environments.
As Inside Line's goal is to keep our readers informed through every part of a vehicle's development, from its first appearance at an auto show to our own rigorous evaluation, we have a crew of photographers and writers staked out in some of the places mentioned above, as well as at Germany's famed Nürburgring race track (a popular place for performance-car high-speed testing), to bring you the latest Spy Photos of these vehicles.
The camouflage is often heavy on the vehicles, even to the point where a manufacturer will disguise the shape of the vehicle using fake body panels, but our staff has been trained to spot the details. We'll analyze the spy photos and point out how lights may have a different placement or style, or how a car's roof line has changed throughout the development process so our readers can follow the development of their favorite cars, trucks and SUVs.
