Thank you AWD!!!

[Rosso]

Hi All,

Aaahhh, arrived home safe & sound from my holiday today (apart from the oil leak that i have just noticed under the bonnet ) but not without a scare.....

Travelling back from townsville & with approx 400km left of our journey i can admittedly say i shat myself!!

My girlfriend was in the hot seat while i was having a breather from driving, she was travelling at a (surprisingly for her) comfortable pace of approx 140km/h when she came across a stretch of road with a freshly resurfaced shoulder. She found herself driving on the loose gravel on the edge of the road & not wanting to upset me with any chips or scratches on the paintwork tried to adjust her driving line but did so a little too sharp, next i know we're drifting sideways on the loose gravel. With tyres squealling, gravel flying & hearts in throats she corrected the car several times while fishtailing side to side down the road surprisingly she managed to keep the car on the bitumen & not once laid a tyre on the dirt where we most probably would have rolled into the ditch. Everything still in one piece i calmed her down & took back the driving duties.

I would have to say that one of the major factors of us nor the car getting injured would have to be the AWD. if we were in a FWD or RWD car & that happened travelling at that speed we would be off the road & who knows how we'd have ended up.

Correct me if im wrong about the awd factor but my gf aint the most experienced driver around & i dont know how much breaking pressure she applied (she cant remember)but she did a great job with the help of subaru of course .

Thank god Subaru's are AWD.

Thank god i bought a Subaru.


Now about that oil leak......

[Ric]

Hmmm, dunno if AWD made much difference once she backed off.

For sure, if it had been FWD, you would have been facing the other way very quickly!

Glad you both (and the car) came out of it unscathed

[moggy]

Good news you're both OK, something like that can go pear shaped very quickly. I expect that the ABS helped with the heavy braking plus AWD certainly helps. (That's why rally cars are AWD!).

Bob.

[adam]

a friend of mine tells an amazing story about when he was driving tour coaches and came across a road train on a similar road(track) when it had been raining and they did a 180....
will tell it when it's not so late(and not so many bevvies)
glad every thing turned out ok rosso,
was wondering where you'd been of late?
adam

[coyote]

That's why rally cars are AWD!

Sorry Bob, but rally cars have awd so they can put more power to the ground. awd is not magic and as Ric suggested, probably had little to do with avoiding a disaster.

VDC, ESP, or whatever you want to call it would have been far more beneficial in that situation. Pity Subaru didn't include the extra couple of hundred dollars of parts to put it into the GTB,

[WhiteGTB]

Lucky call and good to hear all is went well. Phew... I was reading your thread thinking... I hope this ends on a safe note.

AWD is great, I can't stop telling/advertising for Subaru when a person/friend/family member wants to buy a new car, the security in the wet is second to none.

A friend told me once and please correct me if I am wrong, BUT it is only AWD when you have the foot on the accelerator other then that it is still a rolling car, is this right?

[stuntgirl]

your cr also has brake assist...

so it doessnt matter what force your gf placed on the brake. its the response time that it moniters and applys brake force measured from that.

you can imagine a smaller type girl. in an emergencey situation and she slamms on the brake,

then imagine a largr buff guy and he slams on the brake. you can see that the force from the guy wold be greater than the girls. but their sense of urgency would be the same.

so the brake force is measured by the force in which the brake pedal is pressed. so no one is disadvantaged in a situation like that.

i hope that made sense to you

[LIBER8ED]

glad you both made it back in one piece mate, would have certainly got your pucker valve fluttering seeing the oncoming road out your side window.

pat on the back to your "missus" as she was introduced to us, for doing her bit to make sure the susu stayed upright and unscaved.

how many k's you end up clocking over in the end?

[Rosso]

Thanks guys,

Yeah the braking & handling of the car probably played more of a factor than the awd now that i think about it but all in all i felt rather safe during the situation.

Hey Kurt clocked up just under 6000kms for the whole trip, now thats a fair bit of driving in 2 weeks...