A pair of Hummers motor through an off-road course while a Chevrolet Corvette zips through a nearby high-performance track at "The Drive," an interactive auto exhibit outside the Sahara, on March 5. Photo by Gary Thompson.

"The Drive" has driven away.

General Motors' interactive auto exhibit outside the Sahara, known as "The Drive," quietly closed shop late last year, about seven months after the 11-acre "autotainment" test track -- part adult amusement park, part sales pitch -- opened with fanfare in April.

Initially, GM committed to a six-month run in Las Vegas, with the option of extending it beyond that. "The Drive" closed Nov. 19, about one month longer than the minimum planned stay.

"It was a test lab," Christie Conti, a GM spokeswoman, said Monday. "We always viewed it as a pilot program. We were happy with what we learned.

"It's like the circus came to town, and the circus does come to an end," Conti said.

GM, which has seen its popularity and market share slide in recent years, hoped "The Drive" would help it tap new customers from Las Vegas' roughly 40 million annual visitors.

And officials at the Las Vegas Monorail and the Sahara -- the former of which has its northernmost station right outside "The Drive's" entrance -- hoped the test track would being in people who would otherwise not ride the train or visit the resort.

Conti said "The Drive" drew a total of around 50,000 visitors in its first four months, exceeding GM's expectations. And the demographic group visiting the exhibit skewed toward young adults, something GM viewed as a positive, according to Conti.

But "The Drive" did not appear to help monorail ridership, which dropped throughout 2006 in the wake of a December 2005 fare hike.

"The Drive" opened with 13 different types of GM vehicles under six nameplates, which anybody with a valid driver's license who could pass a sobriety test could drive on test tracks at the facility.

"The Drive" included a high-performance track with a number of turns and switchbacks and a pair of off-road courses with hills, slopes, ditches, boulders, logs and other obstacles.

The two courses included more than 1,500 tons of rocks and boulders, more than 300 feet of logs and 60 railroad ties.

GM hopes to take what it learned from "The Drive" and apply it to a future marketing and entertainment effort.

"What that is, is still under wraps. Where it will be is up in the air," Conti said, adding that Las Vegas "is not ruled out" as host, "but we don't have anything planned."

Nonetheless, "Vegas is a great city to do stuff in," Conti said. "Vegas is always in our view."

The end of "The Drive" also marks the termination of GM's marketing partnership with the monorail. GM, which was the largest company to sponsor the monorail to date, had a six-month agreement giving it theming and naming rights to the Sahara station.

"The Drive" and the monorail relationship "went in tandem," Conti said.

At the time "The Drive" launched, monorail officials were hoping for a longer-term relationship with GM.

"We know this is going to be the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership with General Motors," Curtis Myles, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Monorail Co., said at opening ceremonies for "The Drive" last year.