wilfred2k5

So, I decided to play with the cruise control, now that I'm working on 3500 miles. First, you can get some darned amazing mpg stats with cruise on and A/C off. At between 65 and 70, I can pull 29mpg consistently. I haven't checked whether it's accurate at fill-up time, though.

Anyhow, I wanted to check how well the car holds speed on hills. Some cars, if you hit resume while 20 or so mph slower than the setting, will floor it until at speed. That's a very crude approach. Finer cars will downshift and lock in at a pre-programmed rate of acceleration.

Well, the C6 did pretty well. The downshift was obvious, but 30-50 wouldn't've alarmed my passengers, if I had any. Then, I wanted to see how out-of-line it would get on the far side of the hill. My C5 would typically have me at 75 by the time I reached the bottom of this hill, from 50 at the peak.

An amazing thing happened. My speed reached about 53mph. I heard and felt a quiet ch-ch-chunk and a downshift. A few seconds later, it happened again. One more time. I made it all the way to the bottom of the hill WITHOUT braking or forcing a downshift!!!

I know the car downshifted on its own. I strongly suspect that it braked as well...and quite nicely too. I couldn't have braked as perfectly myself. A passenger wouldn't've noticed anything at all, unless he picked up a little bit of the drivetrain growl from the V8.

It was very impressive. My guess is that this goes along with the adaptive cruise control.

I'd love to hear back from someone else who has tried this. This is almost as cool as the heavy equipment sounds you get from engaging the parking brake in a closed garage! The car felt smoother than the TGV going through the motions.

electroboy

I drive diesel!

har har...

TulsaTime

Cheater!

Canon Shooter

In another thread, we were talking about the fact that the cruise will brake when you "coast". This was explained as the new ESP 8.0 functionality. I'm guessing your experience is related to that as the cruise is now "smarter" and can maintain speeds by using the brakes as well.

Did you also know that ESP 8.0 keeps your brakes and discs dry when it's raining ?? Applies the brakes every i can't remember to wipe away the moisture. This will save a couple of milliseconds when you do an emergency stop...

Imola Yell S3 (225)

On the cruise control (I am not certain about this) - try pressing the resume button with your foot on the gas. The multitronic I had would then accelerate more quickly to the previous setting. Not sure if I was in sport mode also :-/