My never ending car search is plagued by my nitpicking need to find a car with or without specific options. I have been looking at MK3 VWs and Focus SVTs both of which sometimes come with traction control. I would like to avoid the nanny factor of traction control but I do not know if I am being overly picky. Has anyone driven a traction control equipped SVT Focus or VR6 GTI in anger? Is it really intrusive or is it hardly noticeable? The car will see rain, but never snow.
Don't they have VDC/TC disable buttons?
What he said^
Traction Control is the sukz.
And if no disable button, just do like we did on the 4Runner this winter: pull the plug under the hood 
My Focus SVT didn't have it, but I believe it can be disabled (switch on either the dash or console).
IIRC, only the EAP/Cold Weather package cars had it. Most did not.
I live in the snow belt, I disable the TC. why? because occasionally, you NEED to spin the wheels to rock the car out of the snow. With the TC on, you're stuck if its heavy wet snow or slush. I see it over and over again.
PS. the disable switch rarely completely disables the it btw. best way is to remove the ABS fuse and be done with it.
ABS and traction control work fine on clean dry pavement. The worse the road conditions, the more likely you are to die because of electonic intervention.
And if any of you don't believe me, come visit in January and I'll put you behind the wheel of an Astrovan with the early abs. The newer the vehicle, the less active the programming, it seems. Kind of like the early airbags that killed short people- the gov eventually decided to depower the bags a bit and let people live..
My focus svt had traction control, and while there was a switch to turn it off I hear it still intruded at the limit.
I ran an autocross once and left it on, I couldn't figure out why it was down on power coming out of certain corners. I realized that since the car has an open diff it was trying to spin a wheel out of tight corners and the traction control was fighting with me.
Day to day I rarely had it intervene. Then again it had a hard time turning the tires from a stop anyway.
07 350Z was faster with traction/yaw control on the autocross course than without.
My SVT can be intrusive, but its only a fuse away, as long as you dont mind losing ABS.
A Diff helps alot on making it calm down
I do not like traction control. Dad's G35 is faster in the snow without it. Friend's 4 door Wrangler gets stuck in bumper deep snow ( I pull him out with my 97 Nissan pick up, same size snow tires as the jeep).One reason that I bought a 2009 base model RX-8 is the lack of traction control.
Traction control = bad. Pull the fuse or flip the switch.
Traction Control on the Focus SVT can be turned off. we had a note to that effect taped to the steering wheel in this car
It can be defeated entirely but as noted pulling the fuse will also affect the ABS.
Best solution is to put a locking diferential in the car.
IIRC all you need is aftermarket software to defeat it on the SVT.
my idea of traction control is an LSD... my BMW has it, and even with badly worn summer tyres, I was still able to drive that car through several inches of snow this winter.
get one without traction control and have a limited slip added to the diff?
AS for ABS. I will be adding a defeat switch to the saab. It steps in WAY too early
I thinked we've had this discussion before....
FWIW, I LIKED the stability control on the M3. It was relatively unintrusive unless I was misbehaving, and it added a measure of security on "surprise" surfaces.
The VW would have EDL and there's no way of disabling it short of pulling an ABS sensor. Breaks axles very cleanly when it engages when you're trying to launch the car.
Thanks, I know you can partially disble the traction control on SVT, but without pulling the ABS switch the TC will always be lurking, even with the tune. Does the VW disable switch fully disable TC?
I've driven seveal newer cars with trac control and stability control. They are all horrible. Seveal times when cornering at speed the car would "bog down" and I would lose the intended path. ABS i can live with some times, but these other systems scare me.
The later VW's that have the ASR button will fully disable it when the switch is activated.
All my vehicles have had traction control, and stability control. I'm pretty sure thats what the 3 pedals on the floor and the round thing in front of you do.
Wiggles his foot
/Southern accent on/
"This is my traction control, sir."
/Southern accent off/
ABS too...
didn't grm do a story that showed that all the "nannies" can actually make you more consistent and sometimes faster.
I always run the TC on my Mustang on the street unless I'm REALLY trying to hoon it. It allows for a reasonable amount of side slip and wheel spin before intervening, but when it does, man, it DOES. I always turn it off when autocrossing since I'm in a controlled environment.
Personally, I think as long as you can turn it off it wouldn't keep me from buying a car. I also would absolutely not disable the ABS on any recent vehicle. I realize that a well trained entusiast can outbrake the ABS system and that there are conditions that negate it's effect, but other people occaisionally drive my car and I live in the south. The circumstance where it helps outweigh the circumstance where it hurts. Again, my opinion on what seems to be a touchy subject sometimes.
exactly.. as per turning off the ABS in my saab.. it would be on for 99.9% of the driving I do... but after this winter, I realised how much faster you stop in snow when you can lock the wheels and make a snow plow out of them
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