Apart from occupying the Motor Equipment News editor’s chair, I also sometimes get to test new cars for our sister magazine New Zealand Company Vehicle, both during press launches and in longer (usually week-long) road tests.
All the automation and ADAS systems in modern cars take the effort out of a lot of driving and keep us safe, but it can also make the car somewhat boring to drive. Car company press launches tend to take in what might be termed interesting drive routes (ones with lots of corners). The combination of automatic gearbox, traction control, ESC, etc certainly helps keep the car stable, but it can be more of a fun driving experience to turn some of that off and go old-school, where the seat of the driver’s pants supplies the traction control, ABS and ESC.
Figuring out how to turn all these off can require delving into the manual in some cars, but others make it easy. Some of the luxury models even have different steps in say the traction control, with a “relaxed mode” that does not totally disconnect it. Unfortunately, most cars reset to full automation when the engine is stopped, so you need to go through the process to reset to your preference after each stop.
Top ratings go to cars that have paddle shifters for the automatic gear override, probably no easier, but it feels cool. I guess the other challenge is that some newer drivers will never have experienced driving cars without all these features so will not have the ability to do things like cadence braking or controlling traction just on the edge of break away or even knowing when to best change gears so they will miss out on some of the fun.
If you drive this way for a while, you do realise how much more relaxing the automated option is – the nice thing is that you can revert to that when you want a break!
So next time you see an interesting piece of road (or maybe go and find one), Go old-school!
