Whenever I drive it I end up jerking forward trying to manually compensate. I imagine if I just accepted it everything would be much smoother .
The parent's lack of throttle response is most likely due to turbo lag. Modern cars are getting better with variable vein turbos.
If your Mom's Mercedes suffers from poor throttle response I'd guess it's because she purchased one with a small engine relative to the size of the vehicle. A C230, for example, isn't the sportiest of cars. A C63, however, does not suffer from poor throttle response.
Glib solution: Buy an AMG and smile when you put your right foot down, but cry when you go to the bank...
I alternate driving a Honda Odyssey and a recent base level Hyundai Elantra as a commuter every day. I'll tell you flat out this is not a problem with too little horsepower or torque. I've also recently driven one of the AMG Mercedes variants for a few days, and seemed to notice the same issue in that vehicle, but much less pronounced.
> The surge you experience is probably the transmission down-shifting.
What I'm experiencing seems to be slightly different than what the original commentor started out with. I'm referring to starting moving forward from stop, such as a stoplight.
> Glib solution: Buy an AMG and smile when you put your right foot down, but cry when you go to the bank...
Naw, I still have my 240z sitting out back. It was fairly tricked out prior to it becoming basically useless most the time when I had multiple children. I get most of my jonesing for fast cars satisfied by the fantasy that I'll one day fix it up again. I think it was way more fun to drive than most the modern fast cars, because it's not so much about how fast you go, but how fast if feels like you are going. Driving a small early 70's sports car serves that up pretty well even without actually going all that fast. :)
I never drive with traction control or in comfort mode - not even in winter. It's a completely different car with them off - if you get another chance to drive one I'd suggest turning it all off. Unfortunately the throttle isn't linear but any more than 20% will spin the tires.
I also have an S2000. It has half the horsepower and weights 1,000lbs less but it's a blast.
> I also have an S2000. It has half the horsepower and weights 1,000lbs less but it's a blast.
50% the horsepower but 74% the weight isn't that bad a trade-off. Less top speed, but likely better cornering, which is probably fun. :)
Turbo lag is a real issue too, although newer cars deal much better with it. Many newer model Audi's for example, it's hard to even identify the lag (not so true 10 or even 5 years ago).
Source: I own a C63 and my startup procedure includes completely turning off traction control and putting the transmission into S+ every time I get in the car.
I will not be changing my behavior. ;)
In that hypothetical situation I might wish that they had taken some high performance driving courses from me or my colleagues/friends. And spent time behind the wheel of cars at the limit, as I have, so that they had better skills to potentially avoid the accident they caused (with or without ESC).
ESC doesn't save people from bad driving, it masks some of their errors.
There is nothing wrong with disabling traction control. Please don't use the ESC in your car as a crutch. It won't save you.
I didn't take them, I taught them.
We call the driver aids "nannies" in motorsports because they fix some driver errors. They limit control and input. They don't react for the driver. Interesting fact: A driver can out-brake ABS. The vast majority of motorsports competitors do regularly.
I'm not sure why I'm engaging in this, I should probably have more coffee... :)