[s-cars] NAC - Another Toyota story

[Mark Turczyn]

Interesting that the pundits have not dredged up the Audi experience 
with "unintended acceleration".

I think electronics is a good bet in this case- which may make any 
new fly by wire car vulnerable.

  I had a recent experience in a 2009 S8 that a friend of mine owns. 
He let me take it for a spin and we were on a long straight when  it 
started to accelerate hard without me pushing the pedal.  I stepped 
on the brake and it hauled it down but as soon as I let off the brake 
it would accelerate hard again.  I did this cycle three times. Then I 
downshifted manually and still no change.  I did not what to put it 
into neutral out of fear that the motor would go to redline so I 
tried one more downshift before I was going to slow down, pull over, 
and turn off the motor.

The extra downshift did the trick but the experience was pretty 
crazy.   I put my foot into it again and we went on our way.   At the 
end of the ride I was more upset with the dumb shallow cup holder 
then I was about the "unintended acceleration" because my friend put 
his cup/thermos into the cup holder with the top still cranked open 
and when I pulled a hard right turn the cup landed in my lap and did 
the hot coffee in the crotch trick.