ASR: How Good Is It?

[fuzzer]

didn't the elk debarcle get ESP on the A Class around the 97 era?

I would guess the S would have been kitted with ASR early 90's. A number of boggo standard Fords had TC 1999.

Thats when they all started to get it as standard. It was available from 1997 as an optional extra on most models.

but , youre right about the A class, but that didnt come out in the UK till 1998

 

[hawk20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control
Mercedes-Benz was the first to introduce ESC in 1995 on their W140 S-Class model. BMW and Volvo began offering ESC on some of their models later in the same year. In 1995, Toyota began offering ESC system called Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) on Toyota Crown Majesta, [11]while Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, and others investigated and developed their own ESC systems.
During a moose test (swerving to avoid an obstacle) which became famous in Germany as "the Elk test" a journalist during 1996 rolled a Mercedes-Benz A-Class (without ESC) at 37 km/h. Because Mercedes-Benz promotes its reputation for safety, they recalled and retrofitted 130,000 A-Class cars with ESC. This produced a significant reduction in crashes[12] and the number of vehicles with ESC rose. Many high-end makes such as Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volvo, Audi, Saab, and Lexus have made ESC standard on all vehicles, and the number of models with ESC continues to increase.[13] Ford and Toyota have announced that all their North American vehicles will be equipped with ESC by the end of 2009.[14][15] and General Motors has made a similar announcement for the end of 2010

 

[scumbag]

hang on...its just occured to me that Karl Benz made the first development on traction control.

TVR kept the same format throughout its entire life.


I am sure it used to be named the "Throttle pedal".

 

[st4]

No, it is standard on the 211 E class

Anyone know when ESP and ASR first appeared on MBs? Presumably before that it was the option of a limited slip differential to achieve similar aims?

A limited slip diff offers so much more than ASR ever can, especially for high speed driving or cars with a lot of torque (diesel E classes spring to mind).

Some new types of cars use electronics to mimic an LSD (John Cooper works mini) but they aren't as good as the real thing, and I suspect LSDs are ditched now because its a mechanical part that costs to money to make rather than a cheap black box.

 

[stevesey]

Perhaps you have too much grunt with a 320cdi! We found the 220cdi very good in the snow and we had plenty of it this year. We used C or W so as to start in 2nd which helps, I think.

ASR on mine was fine when moving in the snow, but was defeated by iced up parking spaces. I suspect that was more due to total lack of grip when parking in rutted and iced up spaces at work - there were a couple I couldn't push myself into once the rear wheels left the slush of the tarmac and were on striaght ice.