How to Find a Used Car with ESC

you and trolls like you trying to justify mandatory esc are simply ridiculous. what's next? seat belts for motorcyclists? airbags on planes? i know! suv's that aren't suv's! that would be 10x safer!

just learn to drive and stay the hell out of our business.

all good points. i think the real winners though are the oilcos and detroit. the former because heavier more complex cars suck more gas. the latter because more complex cars get repaired lass and net sales increase.

follow the money and you'll find the motivation. it sure as hell isn't about driver/passenger safety or we'd have real driving tests that included skid control, be being encouraged to wear helmets, safety harnesses and have proper roll cages in our vehicles.

The problem isn't ESC. ESC can take a stable vehicle and increase the envelope of stability, making it more stable.

The PROBLEM is that manufacturers use ESC to allow them to make a vehicle that is unstable in the first place, and get away with it because the ESC increases the envelope to where it drives like a normal car.

The X1 is really the best example I can think of. It's an SUV.... the ESC system allows it to drive like a car. But it's not really a car, no matter what it seems like. It's still an SUV.

The ESC of course cannot make the vehicle completely stable under all circumstances... and whereas you can feel that things are about to go out of control with a normal vehicle, the ESC keeps everything stable until you all of a sudden hit a point where it goes out of control without warning. THAT is what folks are objecting too.

Neither of these problems are inherent in ESC, they're just unfortunate results of the way the car manufacturers have decided to implement it.

--scott

The implementation of ESC should the optional on the part of the car makers but I'm glad that my car has it. As far as stability goes, I think that the modern car has no problem with stability when driven in the manner it was designed to. My guess is that most car makers will install ESC anyway because consumers will demand it.

Sadly, I don't think that many cars were designed to be driven at modern highway speeds. I feel more secure driving some quite vintage machinery than my couple year old Impala company car.

nate

I think modern cars are great but that's just my opinion. OTOH, my 67 Mercury Park Lane Brougham was one heck of a ride. A big, comfortable, luxurious, boat ride.

I guess it depends on whcih cars you're talking about, too. My daily drivers for years were a long string of 80's VWs most of which had some aftermarket suspension parts, plus one or plus two wheels/tires, etc. etc. etc. mixed in there was an E28 BMW and a Porsche 944. I doubt that contemporary American sedans were quite as confidence inspiring.

nate

I bought a Rabbit cause I needed a car in a hurry when my Alfetta crapped out yet again. After 3 Fiats and an Alfa, it was a revelation not to smell oil or have oil leaking into my parking space. It had really skinny tires and when I went around the corner a little to fast, the car just slid sideways a little without changing directions. It was a car that I bought in desperation but pretty much fell in love with after a few drives.

Well, my experience with thousands of tests is that you will almost never be able to get over 0.95 and rarely that good.

That describes my 92 explorer perfectly. With the rudimentary rear ABS it's as good as a typical "truck". When the ABS doesn't work it's a disaster in a hard stop. My 76 Blazer was bad all the time. I finally had to add an adjustable proportioning valve to keep it from swapping ends in the rain.

The BC Fiat 124 sports coupe that I had came with a variable proportioning valve on the frame with a link to the rear live axle. At high attitudes in the rear end, the valve would cut line pressure to the rear. It was a pretty neat system. My guess is that it wouldn't work in the rain though.

Did Fiat ever make _anything_ that worked in the rain?

--scott

it's a common system on many euro cars that don't get sold here. i've driven a few and they work just fine in the wet. there's one on my toyota pickup too.

My guess would be... probably not. :-)

I actually saw a Fiat X1/9 on the road the other day. In perfect condition. I hope he made it home.

Volkswagen used a similar arrangement on the 80's watercooled cars. Unfortunately the one on my GTI 16V froze up presumably while the car was sitting for a couple of years, and the first time I really had to nail the brakes I got a nasty surprise :/ Never had a problem with any of the others though, so I would assume that overall it was fairly reliable.

nate