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-   -   Ford Fiesta 1.6S Track day & ABS demonstration (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/43553-ford-fiesta-1-6s-track-day-abs-demonstration.html)

Last week, Ford invited some media journalists to the MMST, in Chennai to have a go with their Fiesta 1.6S. The idea was to make people appreciate the changes made in the favourable light of a race track. The chief of vehicle dynamics, Ford Australia, Mr. Con Balasis was present to demonstrate the handling dynamics of the car on the track. The course was set up with more cones (other than Mr. Con himself :)) to create the situations of a Collision avoidance manuever apart from the usual slalom and decreasing angle corners.

The event was neatly divided into demo laps, individual laps and some ABS/EBD demonstrations. The demo laps with Mr. Con were amazing as he hurled the car through the cones(again...No pun intended Mr. Con). While it got some of the inexperienced people too excited...I got behind the wheel of my car and followed him in his Fiesta. Mr. Con was driving as the pace car but the lady behind me was too slow and getting far behind that Mr. Con had to slow down spoiling the fun I was having. The individual laps that followed more than made up for it though.

While I have to reserve some of the photos for printing purposes, here are some to feast your eyes upon. Will give more on the story later.


The lineup of cars. In fact there was one more Fiesta which had the ABS disconnected












The truck pouring water to wet the track


Con approached the wet patch and hits the brakes and attempts to steer it at the same time to avoid an imaginary obstacle that suddenly jumped into the road.


The ABS and EBD equipped car responds without locking its wheels and he comes to a stop avoiding an imaginary obstacle



He does the same in the vehicle with ABS+EBD disabled. You can see that despite the steering lock, the vehicle slides forward



And he ends up like this.

Nothing new here. We have all been brought up driving non ABS vehicles so far and we know how an ABS equipped vehicle stops. But Ford thought it necessary to demonstrate this one.

The funny thing was that everyone preferred to watch the non ABS vehicle come to a screeching haltlol:.

(Couldn't click too many pictures as I was more involved in doing more laps. Sorry for the quick shutter speeds that seemed to have taken the motion out of the pictures.)

WOW!!!! Thats all i can say.

Great! Its nice to see the testing of car with or without ABS/EBD. Sure my next car would have ABS/EBD.

It must be an exhilarating experience.

Thanks for the pics and write-up, Vivekji.

Its good to see manufacturers out to prove the importance of ABS and EBD. The next step in this regard would be making these standard across models, or atleast providing the customer with an option of having these across variants, rather than limiting them to the top-end variants alone.

Hi Vivekji05, great report... Were the laps on the long or short loop ? Can I ask what lap times were being posted by the 1.6S ?
From some of the pictures it appears the cars were run in the reverse direction, i.e. anti-clockwise, on the track - were the cars run in the opposite direction on the start-finish straight alone or the entire lap ?

P.S. - How does one get invited for such an event ? :)

wow - that looked lik fun. but you wre all sitting shotgun to mr. Con? another reason - why cant they make ABS etc standard for all cars?

Wow! Great pictures...thanks for sharing. The Fiesta 1.6S looks awesome in racing blue. In this era of 8 lakh rupee fuel-efficient sedans & common-rail engines, it is refreshing to see a revv happy driver's car. C'mon Ford, give it another 20 horses!

On a related note, it's been raining 1.6S' on Team-BHP. Lots of reports coming up in the reviews section. Ford better take good care of these owners with trouble-free cars and quality after-sales.

+1 to that.

The pictures make me drive faster, so what if its just a bike or small car!

I appreciate Ford for displaying importance of ABS. We had a minor crash which could be easily avioded if ABS was there.

Anyways, Fiesta remains a driver's car and thats a good point. There are very few drivers car's remaining in under Rs. 10 lakh segment.

The 1.6s is a sure beauty. A desirable C segment Sedan, but can't it have a different fuel map, a better exhaust etc from the factory.

Looks like a lot of fun. They should have also invited the Team-BHP motley bunch to test their cars on track.

All the cars sport temporary number plates. What is Ford going to do with them once the track event is over? Don't tell me they are going to be shipped off to dealers to be sold to customers!

I would say they would probably be sent to dealerships as TD cars but can't be sure; other option is that they would be offered to Ford employees at major discounts - they do have this policy IIRC

A 100 laps of the long loop on the circuit in that Fiesta 1.6 sport and I would still climb out of it with a smile.

European Fords RULE!
If only the Indian company cared about their customers...

when i took the TD S versions exhaust definitely was better sounding than the normal version, even suspension was better. but somehow i didn't liked the car ........... from outside it looked brilliant but once you in driver seat it wan't fun :(
from nowhere it felt like a car worth more than 8lacs if it was less 7 it wud have been better ............

Well, the Fiesta has good driving dynamics in my opinion. I've driven it(the normal 1.6) on Coimbatore track as well as the S version, on MMST now.


And yes, the exhaust sounds raucous and sporty. The suspension is now slightly less forgiving and the tyres are a lot grippier in the S version. Proved well on track. This is the best driver's car in the sub Rs. 10 lakh segment, I would say.

@im_srini

That was on the long loop. And yes, they made us drive which was the whole idea of the event. I was driving it all afternoon.