With so many Zs having been totaled or damaged already,I expect we will all see a jump in insurance rates soon. Any thoughts?


Bob Z

 

I don't have any data that suggests the Z is any worse than any other car in it's class - people are not going to come here and say
they HAVEN'T totalled my Z yet - only those that have and there's only been an unfortunate few. More than the car itself the age/driving history of the buyer comes into play though a performance car will certainly cost more than a Yugo to insure regardless.

 

It seems alot are slipping out under various conditions, even when its not icy, is there a problem with the VDS ect perhaps? That last guy said he was only doing 30-40 mph and it went nuts and slide out..I mean thats hardly pushing the limits even in rain

 

The problem is(and flame me if you want) people do not know how to drive... The Z is a high power and torque REAR wheel drive car. Whether is has VDC or not doesn't matter. You shoudn't rely on the computer to drive for you. The Z has SUMMER tires on it and not all season. I think this is probably the reason of so many wrecks. I can drift my car in the cold in 4th gear easily. Its actually fun if you know what you are doing. I think that people don't realize how shitty the stock tires are in the cold. I already have over 10,000 miles so I should know....
Just my .02
Jason
NJ

 

I'd have to say driver error. 30mph can be pretty high depending on the kind of turn he was in. Slow down and you will keep yourself and your car safe!

 

No, the VDC is the best safety feature of the car. Many don't have VDC some don't even have TCS. Both can be turned off - even in BAD weather conditions. In the rain VDC functions magnificently.

With VDC on, in rain, it is almost impossible to lose the rear end when turning. With the computer throttling down and selectively braking the wheels, the rear end aligns itself in an instant perfectly.

 

i know how to drive this car. the 5-6 other austin z's that were following me down limecreek road last weekend could not keep up ... i was breaking/coasting alot in the straights just to let them catch back up to me.

not saying im a professional driver ... far from it, im just not some idiot who bought a sports car and cant drive it. the turn that i wrecked coming out of, ive drifted around it at 60-70mph before ... i do it alot coming home from school every day ... i just happened to be going slow this time bc my radar had been going off a few minutes before hand and i was taking it slow.

 

Did you have your VDC turned off then? What caused it to veer off so badly to cause your wreck?

 

I hav'nt come across too many turns where 30mph was too fast, short of a right angle- so it worries me that it just lost control, given the driver seems to know what he's doing usually

 

You never had it slide out at all on one of these rainy seattle days?

 

i did have the vdc on.

just thinking about what could have happened ... im thinking something in the suspension snapped, the tire blew out, or i hit something in the road to actually cause the spin. it was cold outside, but not icy ... maybe 40-45F

the vdc would have corrected once i got into the spin. when the car finally came to a stop, i finally did look at the gauges and i noticed that the slip light and the vdc off light were on ... and the tire preasure in the right rear tire was not reading.

 

Hey Morrocan Mole,

I believe you. I have to agre with you that somehting might have broke on the car to have caused this. If the temperature was 40 - 45 degrees then there was no way that there was any sort of icing going on. I would try as hard as you can to get some sort of solution for this.

 

You can bet the insurance will go up if people continue to get tickets and push the car to - and beyond - its or their capabilities. Most of us have a real reasonable insurance rate right now and here's the reason: the car just doesn't have a history of tickets/accidents/theft yet. Just wait until more and more time goes by. 6 months......1 year.........

People posting here talk about only having one or two speeding tickets the past couple of years. Maybe they think 5 or 6 is a lot, but to me one is a real eye-opener and two is a lot. One recent poster was willing to accept responsibility for paying for his first speeding ticket, but didn't think it was fair that his insurance would go up.

The bottom line is simply this. If you speed and/or have an accident, you are viewed as a higher risk to the insurance company and they are going to help mitigate their risk by charging you more. To make things worse, if too many Z drivers start getting tickets, having wrecks, or their cars get stolen, the insurance rates will go up for us all - you can bet on that.

IMHO (steps off of soap box )
WayneTN

 

Yes, I have. It has only come on once when I didn't expect a problem to occur and it worked flawlessly. Other times I have been purposely accelerating and cornering to deploy the VDC to find the car's limit (in rain or wet conditions) in safe areas. It is very difficult to induce the car to slide with VDC on. Either the guy's VDC was off, failed or he hit oil or some slippery substrance that prevented traction (but that seems unlikely since at some point traction would have been established before the impact). I am sold on VDC.

 

What if he was downshifting at the time and had the clutch in? The VDC wouldn't be working would it? Doesn't it require power to work properly? I've heard that you need to keep some power on through the turn. I'm sure he's already thought of this, though.

WayneTN

 

Ok thanks for your answers! I feel a bit better about it, I would never turn those off but I was getting worried the Z was squirrely as a Viper maybe!

 

and t is not a panacea. Good drving is the key. IMO, with all of the front wheel drive autos out there these days, many have forgotten that driving a rear wheel drive requires a different approach. Be careful oiut there.

 

Does the Z have any kind of Black box device maybe that could give some clues?

 

Even though my current car (stang) is relatively low powerd compared to the Z I hope its at least taught me to be more cautious when I finally get mine soon

 

Nothing is more dangerous than a corner you have been around a million times before.


My story was on a motorcycle. I was going around a corner that I was VERY familiar with when suddenly the 700 lb bike started to slide out. (and on a heavy cruiser you can NOT use your leg to hold it up like a dirt bike).

turns out the town had put down oil and gravel but NO SIGN.

I managed (barely) to keep it upright, but I think the seat had a few more puckers in it when I stood up.

The point is that anything could be on the road, dirt, sand, water, antifreeze.

In this case it sounds like it might have been something like that.

Did you walk the curve later to look for causes?