[s-cars] Moose-Test (NAC)

[jimk at spotgraphicsinc.com]

On Sunday my wife and I attended the Volvo XC90 ride-and-drive event in
Alameda, CA.  My wife is pregnant and has convinced herself that a
medium-size SUV with a 3rd row seat may be the thing to get.  (I'm
thinking a second S6 Avant, but whatever).  The car (truck) was pretty
cool and well presented.  The highlight of the thing had to be the
"Moose-test demonstration".  Volvo is making a pretty big deal about how
this SUV is pretty hard to roll, what with its gyro, DSC, and all kinds
of other electronic aids.

Before we drove the thing ourselves my wife and I got in a Volvo with a
professional driver for the "Moose-Test".  We were in the first gorup to
go on this ride.  The dude actually dropped the throttle, chirped the
tires in front of a crowd of people and their kids, got it to 65 mph,
aimed the car at a life-size Moose dummy and then did the most violent
accident avoidance maneuver I have ever seen or hope to see again while
leaving his foot on the gas.  It didn't help that there was another
Volvo right in front of us and we saw how far the thing tipped and got
sideways a few seconds before we did the same thing.  The thing was
amazing though, the driver never took his foot off the gas and you could
feel the car braking and accelerating and straightening the thing out.
Allison almost barfed and looked a bit queasy for the next half-hour.
Man, it was sort of frightening, but definitely an e-ticket ride, the
worst part was having to anticipate it, unlike an actual emergency
event.  I would be VERY scared to try that in any of our cars on purpose
without seeing someone else try it in their car first.  The whole time I
was wondering if we had actually tipped over, would I be offered a new
SUV for free?  The funniest part was seeing a dad and three little kids
do it, the 2 boys came out of the car hollering and very excited, the
little girl just clung to her daddy and he looked kind of pale.

Jim K.
95.5 S6 Avant
93 S4
90 CQ
01 V40
90 740TW
Wanna buy a car?  Let's make a deal.