Flipper 3.0

I have had my car for a little over a week now.

I purposely waited until winter was over (I thought) to get my car, no salt, sand, flying gravel until next winter. I figured that would give me 6-8 months to get over that new car feeling (washing every day, parking 2 miles away from everyone else, etc.). Last night we were hit with 6 inches of snow. So reluctantly, off to work I went.

I turned the ESP off, as some have suggested in the forum, and was in awe of the quattro. Packed snow, ice or slush, the car went through it all with no problems. I have had an SUV for the last eight years, and thought I would miss it, but not the case. I think the only thing that could stop the A4 would be really deep snow, because of clearance.

I have just a little over 500 miles on the car so I am still getting used to the differences between my old "SUV" and the new "Sport sedan", but I just had to share this experience.

More later

Gandalf The Silver

You'd be surprised how poorly some SUV's do in the snow...especially when compared to Quattro!

Landen111

Forgive my ignorance, but why did you turn off the ESP?

Flipper 3.0

The vehicle is more responsive to slippage. Have read many "posts" regarding ESP in snow, and they have said car will perform better, because the driver is in control, not the car. The manual even suggests turning off in deep snow.

April

of extreme conditions. Turning it off, more clearly communicates how slippery it is. Because ESP is an absolute system, it is not happy with any amount of slip, and can be very aggressive in trying to control it - leaving the driver with fewer avenues of control ( slipping and spinning may be the only way to have control ) in extreme conditions.

ESP is meant to help out in the occasional suprise slippery situation. To run it non-stop, may make the brakes very hot ( as they constantly slow spinning wheels ). Those brakes are already working under EDL.

Gandalf The Silver

Interesting...so would you personally turn ESP off, almost all of the time, if not ALL of the time?

April

Above certain speeds, if you have it turned off, but touch the brakes in mid-corner, it comes back on. You see, braking in mid-corner is a no-no. The ESP assumes you must be in big trouble if you are braking then.

Mountian_A4

what I've found is that with ESP on in the snow, if the car starts to lose traction the Electronic Stabaliztion Program's software gets confused. What this does is send you skidding with no forewarning--very disconcerting. When ESP is off the the tires skid and slip but there's enough feed back from this to predict when the car is really going into a slide. The driver can correct for this type of event before it happens again, with ESP on, there is absolutely no warning the car is stable and then its into a complete slide.

Mountian_A4

Yeah, its very scary when the car "suddenly" starts sliding!

Mountian_A4

it has real Mud and Snows not Ultra High Performance summer go fast tires... Um maybe thats the reason.