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thanks RC -- great review!! better than anything i've read in magazines so far!

one question: does ESP really stay off if it's turned off? i heard that in mercs ESP does jump back in if the situation gets out of control -- so that there's no chance to REALLY turn of ESP, you just enlarge the system's tolerance.

once again, thanks for your effort!

regards; zz




As far as I remember, the ESP jumps on again as soon as you apply the brake pedal but I'm not sure if it goes off again afterwards or if it stays activated.
I did a pretty funny thing with ESP turned off to test it for the first time: I drove a "Kreisverkehr" (sorry, don't know the english word but they have these kind of round intersections without red lights all over France) pretty fast with ESP turned off to get a feel when the car starts oversteering and to be able to cope with the slipping rear. I always do that on new cars to get a feeling for it. . Then, I tried so called "Wechselkurven" (changing curves?) to see how the car reacts with ESP turned off. I liked it, the E55 has a pretty good setup even without ESP turned on. But on wet pavement, the E55 becomes a beast with ESP turned off, definetely not recommendable.