The S60 is a competent piece of kit. I'd have one, but the D5, naturally.
Saab is GM, is Vauxhall.
Aye. At 30 in fourth, ours will happily exceed 33 on a descent. But then if you weren't using cruise you'd brake or use third. Maybe both.
Our Ka struggled to maintain 80 up some of the hills in the south of France, heading towards Italy, but then that's not the cruise's fault. It was happy to use full throttle!
*cough* Heh. KMH or MPH? :)
Active control is great. The Jag I borrowed had active cruise. It works very well although a bit disconcerting when somebody cuts in front of you and it puts you into a 3G deceleration. Okay okay not that hard, but disconcerting all the same...
A Carlton could probably manage MPH.
I bet. Probably wakes you up anyway :-)
Yes, Volvo have always made fairly competent cars.
Indeed. However, before Ford, Volvo did share GM parts. The floorpan of the 400 series was from a Cavalier.
Yes. The human brain can often be better.
I can see that, unless you've made some performance enhancements, the standard Ka is not too lively at top end.
LOL! You can't relax any more than when using ordinary cruise control, because you still have to watch out for Muppets pulling out in front of you!
That's the problem with all passive and active cruise control systems - they cannot anticipate. Not yet at least.
Mind you I suspect that if a cruise control could anticipate a worst case scenario it would never let you out on the motorways... :)
It's better than standard, but with the air conditioning humming away and the Ka just thirty kilograms off the maximum permitted weight there's only so much one can expect at a genuine 80 mph...
A noble attitude for sure, however, I'd suspect you're in the minority there - look at ABS and SRS.
LOL, true.
The air/con on these always seemed to drag a lot of power out of that little engine.
From nerding with my OBD-II scanner, my estimate is that the figure is somewhere around eight foot pounds of torque when running, or ten percent of peak torque.
The effect on acceleration is greater than ten percent though, depending on what you're doing. If you're accelerating up a gradient and the car needs to deliver 50 foot pounds of torque just to get you going up the hill, you're accelerating and using 70 foot pounds of torque, when the compressor kicks in it halves your acceleration...
Heh! Whilst I do and have done stupid things, there's more chance of somebody else doing a stupid thing and involving me in it... :)
But seriously, one thing that cruise control has taught me is how the relationship between driving thought processes and accelerator foot. My acceleration sense alowed me to make many subtle changes in speed, for example, when ascending a hill I'd happily let the speed bleed off a little rather than giving it large with the throttle. You don't get that subtle control of your speed with cruise control.
It's most interesting when you tackle a twisty, hilly road with the cruise set at 60, when it's quiet at least. The B1225. Then you realise how you let the speed bleed off just a little on the approach to a tight corner before giving it some power to balance the handling... Again with cruise you don't get that.
Mind you, careful use of the presets can do the same thing.
Or you can helpfully disable cruise mid-way through a corner. :)
Ooooh yes. It did. At appropriate times and places, obviously!
Although TBH cruise was *only* useful at those sorts of speeds. It had bags of torque and a crappy 1st generation mechanical cruise that wound the throttle on until it reached the set speed then dropped it completely. Probably bust but it was the first cruise I'd had so what did I know.
At 70mph even in 5th it had so much grunt (3.0 24V) that cruise was pretty much unusable. At 120+ it was tamed enough to be pleasant!
Should have fixed it really but the car died first.. and I liked to *drive* it anyway ;-)
When my wife had one I used to refer to the aircon as the "emergency brake".
In Germany then? :)
Ouch!
It might be. All cruise control systems I've used progressively wind up the power before reaching the set speed. Many slacken off the power as it approaches. Our aftermarket set up has been about the best for this - on a level flat road it'll perfectly reach the set speed without overshooting. It's great!
It sounds knackered!
That's what back roads are for, though. Motorways are the easy option.
I'm not talking about you here, I'm talking about the dorks that drive like an arse because they think the air bags or ABS will save them.
Indeed.
Yup. Although I fail to see the merits of using cruise control on a twisty road, that's exactly where you do need to have full control.
Only if you can pre-empt all circumstances.
Not a good idea.
That would sound about right.
LOL. I can remember the number of complaints we got about the performance of the Ka with air/con.
Heh I didn't get my point across too well. It's everybody else that worries me...
That's exactly it. It robs the driver of some subtle control over the vehicle.
Not really, although for the foolish it could be used as a means of experimenting with different tyres / suspension / pressures / weather conditions?
People still believe that air conditioning materially slows the Ka down per se. It does because it'll weigh a little, but only the difference of a few donuts.
It slows it down when it's engaged. Fortunately, there's an on / off switch.
Not to mention that the newer 1.3 Duratec 8v Kas have shorter gearing when they come with air conditioning...
Isn't that always the way ;-)
Which is good if you can't dri........ Ok nuff said ;-)
Huh!
Yes.
Really?
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