A thought just occurred to me.

I'm assuming that the tC will have anti-lock breaks, traction control, stability control, etc., etc. as standard equipment.

Will these silly electronic nannies be defeatable? If they're not, there's no way that I'm buying this car. I HATE anti-lock breaks, I want to be able to go into a skid if I so desire. I always shut off traction control on any car that I'm driving because I like to be able to induce a little wheelspin if I so desire. And VSC... I have fun driving. I like to drive HARD. On many, many, many occassions, I take turns on two wheels. On more occassions, I powerslide around corners (not technically a powerslide, since it's FWD, but you get the idea). If there's little electronic nannies killing my fun, I'm going to be EXTREMELY dissappointed... to the point where I wouldn't buy the car.

Now, I know that ABS is very often not defeatable, unfortunately, and I guess I can deal with that, because it's a pain trying to find any new car that DOESN'T have ABS (about the only ones I can think of are bargain basement sub-sub compacts that offer it as an option, and the new Lancer Evo VIII MR... because you can't have anti-lock breaks on an AWD car with three limited slip-diffs without an active center differential).

But if there's non-defeatable TC and VSC, that would definitely prevent me from buying this car. Anybody have any info?

 

ABS saved my life in the WRX once, I'm not gonna down that...

As for traction control in a FWD car with barely enough torque IMO to move the car... I dunno...

And using the E-Brake for slides in a FWD car IS called power sliding...

 

Dude, I'm just glad you live on the opposite coast from me.

Be sure to disconnect that pesky airbag too. Don't want it going off if you're still maneuvering. You might even get yourself nominated for a Darwin Award...

 

The first time I ever had ABS kick in on me in a car, I didn't know what was happening, and it scared the crap out of me. Since then, I've come to loathe it. It's a very unnatural feedback to have going through my foot, and it completely screws with my intuition as to how far my car is going to go with a given amount of break pressure... I'd much rather trust to my own driving skill than to a computer. But I guess that, like airbags, it's something that I'm just going to have to learn to get used to, as much as I hate it, because it's going to be around for a while (airbags I hate because I know for certain that they're going to injure me if I ever get into an accident... I drive with my left arm on the window ledge, and my right arm straight at the top of the steering wheel. If an airbag goes off, it's going to break my arm, and shove my broken arm up into my face. Not a pretty picture, but what can you do).

As far as not having enough torque for TC to be a problem... I get wheelspin easily with my car, which has 70 ft-lbs peak torque, on wet pavement. On dry pavement, I ALWAYS get wheelspin coming out of red lights with anything over 110 ft.-lbs. In the tC, I'd probably get wheel spin for a solid two seconds before the wheels catch at every traffic light... I drive really, really hard. Unless I'm driving someone else's car, and they're in it. Hell on tires, but those pretty clouds of blue smoke at traffic lights are part of the joy of driving.

And speaking of this, am I the only one who TRIES to get caught at red lights instead of making the yellow light... because I like to bust out from a stop with wheels screaming and engine roaring more than I like to get to my destination quicker?

 

um... maybe you just have bald tyres...

Seriously FWD cars need little to none traction control... Maybe brake asistance but then you'd have to be a complete moron to go that fast into a corner with a FWD car...

Wheel spin is one thing, I can drop clutch and screech any tyre, but car companies don't put things like launch control on cars meant to be driven not dumped...

IMO, if you drive that hard, it isn't the hardware of the car you're worried about... It's the attitude... I'm not trying to flame I'm being really really sincere....

ABS makes you stop at a shorter distance under emegency braking than your emotions would every allow in an emergency situation... Your primary reaction would be to stomp the brakes in a non ABS car and if you lock the tyres... You're screwed... I know ABS saved me even tho I felt my car plowing forward but I've locked my tyres many times with the Camry and I know for fact that if I didn't have ABS at that one time, I would of actually hit someone really hard...

(These are all sudden 65 - 0 stops on the freeway due to road construction / accidents ahead)

 

If your really good with the brakes its actually better to not have ABS because you can actually stop faster if you you know how to pump the breaks...but thats pretty hard to do in an emergency situation.

 

See, when I was a 17, I drove stupidly. Everybody does. But does unlike most people, I didn't grow out of the desire to have fun driving. I just learned to do it more smartly. And about 80 hours of stunt driving and racing training and, oh, I don't know, a thousand hours of practice later, I feel more confident in my own driving abilities than in electronic doodads.

So I don't drive at crazy insane speeds on highways, and I do all my trick driving and side street drifting at 3:00 in the morning. If I get into an accident (which I've never yet come close to doing, in all of my 24 years on this earth), it'll be me slamming into a telephone poll and killing my own stupid self, not anybody else.

And traction control is an excellent thing to have in snow... even though I've been driving in snow all my life, without any traction control or ABS, and I've learned to do it just fine (though you'd be surprised by the number of people who, even living here in New York where it snows every year, haven't learned... your 4WD SUV is all well and dandy, but you just can't go 40 mph in eight inches of snow). I just want it to be defeatable.

And ABS are fine and great... but if you drive smartly, you should honestly never have them kick in. The only times they've ever kicked in for me are on snow, where I entirely expected my wheels to lock up the way the road conditions were. One thing that I've learned from driver training is that you can drive as fast as you want to, but always remember to leave enough space between you and any cars in front of you, or to the sides or on side streets in front of you, who could potentially come in front of you, so that even if they hit a brick wall and stop dead in 0 feet, and the intervening road between you is covered in an oil slick you didn't see, you'll still be able to stop with room to spare. Even without ABS or VSC.

There's a difference between driving recklessly and driving hard. Driving recklessly is what 17 year olds with fresh licenses do to impress each other. Driving hard is what me and New York City taxi drivers do. You get enough training, and enough practice, and make sure you do it smartly, and you significantly cut the risk.

Is there risk in driving hard? Sure, there's risk in everything. But everyone has their things that they love to do. And driving is mine. You can be an idiot, and try to take a right turn at 90 mph and run into a tree, or you can be me, and make a U turn in a parking lot at 15 mph that's sharp enough to raise the driver's side of your car off the ground 6 inches. I prefer to be me. It really is what I live for.

And things like non-defeatable TC and VSC destroy that. That's why you'll never see auto magazines rate the driving experience on Mercedes' above BMW's, even with the crazy powerful supercharged engines the AMG people put out... Mercedes doesn't let you defeat the electronic nannies, and so you can't really induce power oversteer in S-turns, or get nice 0-60 times. It's all a matter of what you're comfortable doing.

 

Well I can't say I agree, but then again., you're on the east coast

I don't even approve of the way I approach freeway on ramps... I do it though... I just don't make a habbit of it :D

There is no way in the world I'm gonna change your attitude so I'm not even going to try :D Just that if there is an opening in your club, I think I can take a rain check :D

I'm sure you can go crazy in the tC gadgets or not... You can drive hard in any car... Having a car lift off two wheels isn't a sign of a car that can be driven hard, it's a sign of low road handle... A proper car would hug the road, but then again if you're pulling e-brake and doing things in 2nd gear speed, thats another issue...

Your 3am is my 12am :D I'll make sure to start my nightly cruises a bit later just incase I drive all the way to NY sometime...

I had to edit this to take out a LOT of :Ds... I seriously use that damn thing too much..

 

According to: http://www.scion.com/drive/features/..._features.html, there's no VSC and no TC. Probably no Electronic Brakeforce Distribution as with the xB and xA. That's from the current available specs, unless the specs change in the next 2 months.

 

Here's an easy solution: Buy a car that's actually made to be driven hard. Later this year a 2004 srt-4 will probably be close to the same price.

 

Coupla things...

There is no VSC on the tC.

Even if there was, are y'all aware of what this feature does? I can say with all certainty that front wheel drive vehicles CAN experience understeer. When the front end dips and you begin to plow forward, the VSC (on cars so equipped) kicks in and applies brakes to the corners of the vehicle that need them to get you driving in the direction you are pointed. Great stuff and fairly useful on FWD vehicles and even better on ones with higher center of gravity like the xB.

 

ABS-you can still slide and go through turns n ____, or just use the ebrake
Traction control-you can still easily spin the tires

dont worry about it, they are good 2 have