Toyota make good, mundane cars, especially for people who drive sedately. Imagine the surprise when one of the scribes managed to roll the AWD Toyota Kluger (Highlander in the US) during 'Wheels COTY', even with stability control (ESP) enabled!

See pics and story here

PS Toyota can't use Highlander in Oz because Mitsubishi own the name.

 

I'm calling BS! We all Toyotas don't actually touch the ground... they float on a little white puffy cloud.

 

I guess drving anything sideways at 60mph on gravel could do that, but it seems they are very unhappy with the VDC on the yota. I am unfamilar with wheels, could this result in a loss of advertising dollars from toyota?

Do you guys get to watch Top Gear down under?

 

TopGear can be seen on the internets, it's how 17yearold fanboys watch it when their parents are too cheap to spring for British channels.

 

Thats awesome

 

Blasted office firewall that blocks photobucket!

 

Uh Oh! That could of hurt. I bet Toyota does pull ad money, Flip.

 

A good friend and fellow automotive writer managed to roll a BMW X5 last year - so what's your point?

In this case, some dipsh*t hangs the tail out at 60MPH on gravel, leaves the road, and then blames the ESP system for causing the accident? What a tw*t

 

It was a test of the ESP system (which obviously failed btw ). Sounds like if they are going to include such a system then they should include a working version.

 

If they rolled it during all on-road driving then that's one thing but being surprised that an SUV slid across a field at high speed, caught asphalt and flipped on its side is really expecting too much.

Stability control can't break the laws of physics and can't save people from stupidity. You can flip a sports car if you manage to throw it off road at the right speed and angle on a track.

 

With all due respect, if you read the article in its entirety, you would have a better idea of the overall context. They subjected all the vehicles through the same test. They reasoned the dynamics of the Yota were flawed on the basis of the car's inability to gracefully circumvent a test for which ESP was designed to intervene.

I don't know anything about the BMW rollover. So what's your point and in what context do you object to my post? I'm only the messenger but you seem to dispute the validation of their testing (I gather)?

 

I read the article in its entirety, and I get an idea of the context - the author was conducting a test of the vehicle at the limits of traction, and failed to catch the vehicle as it exceeded those limits. There was no contigency plan in place should the vehicle leave the road, and the driver paid the price. Actually, the price paid was really damn low - the driver is lucky that a 60MPH roll-over didn't result in a fatal injury.

I do indeed question the validity of the testing - if the vehicle was attempting to negotiate a turn at a rate of speed that was too high for the available traction, intervention of the stability control wouln't have helped - it still would have left the road. The vehicle was intentionally put into an oversteer condition, and sufficient traction may not have been available to generate yaw torque to correct the attitude of the vehicle before it left the road.

My point about bringing up the X5 is that it's an extremely capable vehicle (more so than many sedans) with world-class stability control and torque vectoring systems. Yet, the rules of physics still apply. I found that out first-hand while playing around the the stability control in a TrailBlazer SS on an icy gravel road; interestingly enough, I decided that the experience was my own fault, and not that of the vehicle (I also didn't leave the road because I wasn't driving like a dumbass).

 

The driver had apparently done this test (or similar) with a different version of the same vehicle. How was he to expect such a vastly different result?

The whole idea of the test was to activate the ESP system. When the ESP system failed to activate the result was the same as most people who have no idea how to drive (and likely the people who would be buying this vehicle).

IMO this makes the test more valid as it shows this is NOT a vehicle to buy if you need to rely on computer aided traction control.

 

If a different result wasn't expected, why bother testing the system? And if you're going to test something like this with the possibility that a failure could occur, why do it at 60 MPH on a road that's bordered by a ditch?

Per the proposed FMVSS rules, stability control testing is to be done at controlled rates of steering using robotic devices. The different result here could have easily been the result of slight differences in speed or steering rate, or slight changes in the road, or a different line, or... any number of things. And no stability control system promises to work under all conditions. This driver found one of those conditions - and then proceeded to drive the vehicle off the road tail-first into a ditch. Nice driving, buddy.

 

Fair point but in the overall context of the COTY test criteria, the FWD version of the Kluger didn't roll nor did its sibling - the larger, heavier Toyota Landcruiser 200 series (your Sequoia, I believe).

If you deem the test was too severe for the humble Kluger, setting a lower tolerance for such vehicles sounds mighty scarey!