OK Guys & Girls does anyone have ESP fitted on their Fabia VRS.

I see that it is a

Hi Martha welcome to briskoda

Very few people seem to have gone for the ESP option, although I do recall someone a couple of days ago saying in a post that they wouldn't be without it.

My last car had ESP, in some 84k miles I only "used" it once so didn't feel it was necessary on the Furby, ABS being much more useful.

OK Guys & Girls does anyone have ESP fitted on their Fabia VRS.

I see that it is a

Obviously not short of a few bob jifster??

i was told that esp was pretty pointless on the furby rs as it didnt really have enough power to need it, and was told that if you couldnt control the standard power of the fabia then dont own one! <----- Exact words from a dealer

chavyboy has it on his Fab.. try a PM

ESP is not about control of power. ESP is stability control. Think of it as the hand that controls the dinky car. I'd of thought any FWD over 100BHP has enough power to induce LOS can benefit from stability.

I have had it on the 4x4 and the Octy vRS so I cannot say how usefull it is on the fabia. But I can say that I personally find it nice to have. Overcook a corner or liftoff oversteer the esp kicks in and sorts it out to an extent. Recently I had to brake hard on a rising left hander's apex, the car as expected was unstable as heck, I noticed the esp light on and the fact I still had all 4 wheels on my side of the road is I think down to the ESP.

Running on the motorway in heavy rain, hit standing water the esp is ready to catch the car as it wanders about.

I am not suggesting you rely on it, it's one of those things that you should never see, but IMHO it's to handy to have.

Only managed to fall out with it once down a snowy hill in wales. As the ESP does not realise your counteracting the slide aswell so you can induce a nice seesaw, nice looking back, not so at the time.

It's greatest use is when your pushing on and somthing happens or you encounter somthing to induce slippage. If your fairly sure your not going to, then it maybe a waste, but it's more active than you think. Personally I think the light activates at a certain point and it does some magic before then but thats me.

Does anyone know whether Fabia ESP is active only on the driven wheels, or on all four?

I read very briefly last night that Mercedes-Benz brought ESP to the masses, as they had to provide it on the A Class to stop it regularly falling off the road!

ESP has to be on all wheels surely, how would it pull a car out of a dangerous situation if it only works on the front wheels?

Does anyone know more about the ESP on the Fabia VRS as I was told by Skoda head quarters that it is not yet available and therefore no info could be sent. As some of you have it then it must be available already so what are they talking about?

My dealer told me that ESP was something they added to the gearbox during manufacture. This is why I wondered whether it only acted on the driven wheels. In the current Fabia brochure "ESP" is not mentioned in the Technical Glossary, so I'm unsure if it's a 2-wheel or 4-wheel device. I dunno, maybe it's active on the driven wheels via the gearbox, and passive on the rear via the ABS.

Does anyone know more about the ESP on the Fabia VRS as I was told by Skoda head quarters that it is not yet available and therefore no info could be sent. As some of you have it then it must be available already so what are they talking about?

Don't know which Skoda HQ you spoke to but at least one person on briskoda has ESP on his Fabia vrs, so it is avaiable

I must have spoken to someone who didn't know what I was talking about so thought it would be easier to say it wasn't available. Did someone say it is

Nothing to do with the gearbox - i am surprised at that response from the dealer.

On other makes (Lexus and MBenz) ESP is a combination of hardware and software that senses the "yaw" of the vehicle and compares it to the steering wheel input, when there is a difference, i.e. under or oversteering then it counteracts by independantly braking wheels which corrects the slide. I have tested this on a Lexus LS430 on a wet roundabout. It was awsome to see the car correct the understeer and bring the nose around.

What i am looking for is experience with the Fabia version of ESP because the performance of the system will be dependant on the quality of the hardware and the speed of the processor that senses the slide.

i also have it on the fabia vrs - dealer knew diddly about it when i asked but had noticed it coming thro on a lot of other cars (esp. the sportier models).it seems that more manufacturers are using it now as a safety feature - and thats all it is.

its there when you need it and you wont know when that is cos it kicks in only when the car is moving in ways that the electronics believe is dangerous.

bit like airbags really- i don't think many people would buy a car without a drivers airbag but they only use it when in a crash situation -still not a waste of cash and imho not a waste to buy more airbags(i.e. side ones) for the fabia vrs.

as for how it performs - i can drive like a nob and get it to kick in - quite a laff really when you go too quick round a corner and you feel the jolt of one or other of your wheels being automatically braked to try and straighten you up and keep you on course.

hopefully i'll never need it in a crash situation , but i'm happy to have it there just in case (baby on board etc) and i think that it should keep my fabia up with a lot of newer models coming out which seem to have it as standard.

try and get a deal on it if you can cos it can make the price of your new fabia a little high but look at it as you would airbags as far as whether or not it is a necessary or not.