Changes

In 1992 General Motor's ten year sponsorship of the pavilion ran up, and General Motors was unsure if they wanted to renew it. Due to the slumping economy, GM was facing large cutbacks and layoffs, and the company was not sure how beneficial their Epcot sponsorship was. If General Motors was to renew their sponsorship, it would require them to perform major renovations or even develop and new attraction altogether (as Disney wanted). GM eventually decided to renew their sponsorship for one year. The stop-gap sponsorship allowed the company to determine how beneficial their sponsorship was, while also protecting the pavilion from a rival sponsor. The one year sponsorship also gave GM time to see if the economy would recover. At the end of the year GM decided to re-up their sponsorship for (presumably) ten years. With the signing of the new sponsorship, GM and Disney decided to create a new attraction for the pavilion. It was also decided that the World of Motion attraction would remain open until the new attraction was developed.

When designing the new attraction, General Motors decided that they wanted to the new attraction to focus on the automobile side of transportation. Walt Disney Imagineering decided to revisit one of their original ideas for the pavilion, an attraction that would let guests experience how cars were tested before making in to the lot. Disney and GM engineers then visited the GM's proving grounds, to get ideas for the new attraction. It was eventually decided that the attraction would be called Test Track, and that it take guests through the rigorous testing that GM cars are put through. On January 2, 1996 the World of Motion was permanently closed. Later in the year, the GM Test Track Preview Center opened giving guests an idea of what the new attraction would be like. Although Test Track was supposed to open in the spring of 1997, problems with the ride vehicles plagued the attraction. Due to the delay, Test Track officially opened on March 17, 1999. Test Track took guests through the various training exercises that crash test dummies usually go through. When it opened, the attraction was the fastest in Walt Disney World, with speeds reaching 65 mph.