In order to verify the effectiveness of the system-level fault diagnostic method which has been designed for the self-healing vehicle (SHV) concept, this paper has developed a generic test platform (GTP) on which to implement the designed diagnostic method. The platform represents the distributed and networked electronic control system of a real vehicle. The more important is that in this platform the functions of an individual network node and the whole networked system are able to be configured to operate in different scenarios. This enables the platform to mimic a real vehicle system in the presence of faults which is indispensable for the validation of a diagnostic method.