In message , at 11:27:11 on Tue, 28
Oct 2014, Neil Williams remarked:

FWIW the brakes on modern cars are perfectly strong enough to fight
against the accelerator - try pulling off against the handbrake and see
how far you get.

That's a fight between the clutch and the handbrake. Repeat the exercise
at 60mph with the throttle floored, and see how effective the handbrake
is then!

Having the brakes absorbing the excess power for a few seconds if the
objective is to stop a skid on a roundabout (which is the sort of
scenario the video clip posted earlier is simulating), but I'm
wondering about how long they'd survive if the car was being driven
enthusiastically up an Alpine pass with power applied for very long periods.

Just like one not fitted with traction control, you have to drive a car
with some mechanical sympathy if you want it to last any length of
time. It's a safety feature, not one designed to protect the car
against poor driving.

It seems you are coming round to my point of view, which is that ASC is
a form of ABS+ for emergencies, and not traction control for everyday
use.

Do you regard 4WD as a merely a "safety feature" to get you out of a
skid, and not something to use to increase your traction whenever
required, even if for extended periods?

I suppose the risk is that it makes poor driving *less* visible until
the point your brakes overheat.

But even so...you wouldn't be making much progress up the pass even
with ASC if there was so little traction that the brakes kept needing
to be applied on both driven wheels. So soon enough you'd give up.

I'd be expecting at least half of full power from the engine to be
usefully reaching the wheels.

--
Roland Perry