It’s quite a normal thing for the materials inside a car to show signs of wear after many years of using the vehicle. Whether you are sitting on the seats, leaning on armrests or gripping the steering wheel, it’s impossible for the interior to stay immaculate. Ford engineers have some pretty unique methods to test these materials to help make sure that all are up to this difficult challenge.
Before using them into your car, the engineers subject every piece of fabric, leather or plastic to some meticulous tests where they are stretched, scratched, snagged, sniffed and even splashed with all kind of substances, from grease to hot coffee.
Apart from these normal "tortures," Ford materials need to go through some unusual tests too. One of them is the "Five-Finger Scratch Test," where different plastics are scratched to see how much abuse they can take.
The "Soil and Cleanability Test" is where the seat fabrics are splashed with different substances to evaluate how well they can be cleaned afterward.
The "Resistance to Dye Transfer Test" rubs materials of various colors against the leather used for car seats to make sure your dreaded new blue jeans won’t destroy, for example, the white leather.
In the "Mace Snagging Test," seat fabrics are spun on rotating rollers roughly 600 times while they are repeatedly hit by a spiky ball to test how strong they are.
Moreover, the automaker has particular people whose job is to smell various samples of materials and rank them to help the engineers make sure that your car’s interior doesn’t have a disturbing odor.
So, now, when your kid writes on your car’s seats or you spill some coffee on your way to work, you know that someone did it before you. Of course, not in your car. And remember, now that you’ve read all of these don’t go and find something that doesn’t wear off just to complain to Ford.
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