[darkpuppet]

traction control only takes measures to make sure your wheels aren't spinning..that's about al it can do. It detects wheel spin, it throttles down and/or engages the brakes (not 100% sure).

Now advance trac.. ahhh..that wonderful $1500 option not only netted you rear disc brakes, but it does the following;

It constantly monitors for wheelspin, the angle of steering wheel and the yaw of the car. So while it does perform the functionality of traction control, it will also checks to see if the car is heading in the direction the wheel is pointing. If it isn't, it throttles down the car, and modulates the brakes on the necessary corners to bring the car around.

In practice, I've noticed that there's a couple of noticeable steps the advance trac system makes.

1) it knows something isn't right, so it cuts throttle and modulates the brakes.
2) it realizes it's not going where it wants to go, and hits the brakes on opposite corners to start bringing the car around.

I personally seem to feel two or three distinctive steps as the car goes to take increasingly severe corrective actions.

ie.. in a wet parking lot, the car turns in, starts to unersteer, brakes start in, car still understeers, brakes in rear corner tightens a bit more, car starts sliding sideways... I found that if I turned in a half second before I hit a snowy corner, I could go all Colin Macrae around the corner.