BleachS2k

had a similar incident when i first bought my car in october... extremely wet roads and almost bold rear tyres... accelrated to roundabout and kept on accelrating round it until... the back fish tailed and had to fight to keep the car away from the curbs. luckily no one was near me or i would have easily taken them out with my rear end

lesson learnt

btw which tyres would be the best if not S02s?

Busamav

I find that the car actually isnt bad through bends in the wet, but treat it like a 170bhp bike and short shift the lower changes .


I spun my wifes the first day , but i blame it on a puncture

lower

You need to watch the camber coming off roundabouts nowadays too. They seemed to have started building them with the camber orientated such that the roundabout is like a mini oval with slight banking all the way round. As you come off the roundabout you go over a sort of ridge just as you are turning and wanting to boot it away. I've had a couple of loose rear end moments through exactly that.

Nick Graves

Good point; the old 'spin it down a sliproad' ploy.

Confuses the RWS a bit. Now if it were active & looked at the steering angle & speed, it would know what it was supposed to be doing...

Why DO EU roads appear to have smart, grippy wearing courses, whereas ours are tar patches & glass beads, with a soupcon of gravel?

Bundle of Mayhem

We have one particular nightmare roundabout here on the A180 - just as you're exiting and about to boot it on the flyover there is an expansion gap in the road about the size of the Grand Canyon and your back end gets thrown out completely.

I had my first real twitch on a mini roundabout - never to be repeated hopefully.

noodle

Getting a bit worried about people saying it isnt bad in the wet, it is and i am a biker so i know a bit about wet weather riding. Dont get me wrong the S is a fantastic car but it is a handful in the wet, especially on s02's and dont let anyone tell you it's about driving skills and all that balls because it is'nt. If the car is sold to joe bloggs in the street then it should have a fair margin of error for wet weather driving and it has'nt.
Dont get me wrong, i have learnt my lesson from a 30mph crash in the wet that would'nt have bothered my other car but don't believe it when people say wet weather driving is'nt an issue in the S because it most certainly is. Take care and go real steady.

Dembo

Let's not get into S02 bashing.

I don't know what it is about roundabouts, but they always seem particularly slippery, much more so than a similarly tight slow corner on the normal road.

Maybe it's because I'm an ex-biker, but I always know to look out for stuff like changes in road surface. Most cars don't have any problem, so most car drivers don't notice.

I think the key to handling the wet is to think about the steering and throttle being linked. There's a certain amount of throttle you can use for a certain amount of steering input before you start to break traction at the rear, so if you only apply more throttle as you also unwind the steering you stay within that safe zone. If you do both smoothly you get a feel for where the limts are and can correct if you start to overdo it, and have a bit of fun too.

The problem comes when you accelerate too early.

Bada Bing!

Turning too early, with too much lock, or applying the throttle on too early. Any of those will do it.

My money is on you turning in too early.

Dembo

Of course it's about driving skill. Knowing your car and what it's like is part of driving skill.

The thing with the S is that it's so responsive. Everything you do has an immediate effect, and if you're used to driving a big sloppy family car your reactions probably aren't sharp enough to deal with it. Add on the weight distribution, the wide tyres, and the LSD, and it's a lot worse than what most are used to.

On the plus side, there's bugger all torque so it actually takes quite a lot to get it to the point where there's a problem. And with the weight being front and rear, unlike a mid engined car, it spins relatively slowly so gives you more time to react.

But it's true that in heavy rain, I'd rather drive my Primera.

s2ook

I had a similar incident about a month after buying the S. I was coming off a roundabout (not especially high grip) in third at about 35 and hit a strip of relaid road (very tarry) which, combined with some adverse camber, spun the car sideways. Fortunately I kept it on the carriageway and no traffic was about at the time.

I've not had any problems since but I now give the S a lot of respect in the wet.