Does anybody else feel that their 1.9 sporting is unsteady under harsh braking particularly at high speeds?

I would like to know the general concensus

I was toying with an Audi returning from a long drive to Dorset and back, approaching a roundabout with those yellow marker lines we went for a late braking match. I beat him but I did get a little feeling of uncertainty that I put down to the yellow lines. Brakes were strong though.

nope never. brakes in 1 word are." tenacious"

i've found them fine but i did come from a Mk1 punto which would squirm badly under very hard braking

I know what you mean.......it's a very interesting point and also like high speed stability seems to, suprisingly, get overlooked.

I had a Mercedes CLK and a Mercedes CL500 and both of these were 'pigs' when it came to high speed stability and steering 'wander'.....constantly needed to be corrected.....bloody exhausting! The rapid breaking was good though.
In my opinion the G. Punto is not perfect when it comes to rapid decceleration
The breaks are good, fade free and very powerful but the actual car does seem to jump about a little and slightly 'tram line'.....I think it's a combo of wide 17" Sporting tyres and crappy engineering dynamics.....you'd never get this on a Fiesta ST for example.
For my money the worst thing about the Sporting is it's lack of high speed stability and the constant need to correct.....there's also a very unpleasant 'floaty' feeling from the front.....you can't relax properly.
I've seen it here posted before and obviously I entirely agree with it....I'd hate to drive down to the south of france in mine....I'd be exhausted!
But then that's what you get for £9000 with 3 years warranty so I'm not complaining.
Really does prove the point to take a thorough test drive before buying.

when i had a test drive in a GPS T-JET, i found the brakes really good and harsh, but this is coming from a ford fiesta driver

Superboy got it bang on, other cars in it's class ie. fiesta st wouldn't handle like the punto under harsh braking.

Then again my m-jet has knocking coming from the front nearside which i'm almost sure is a fcuked bush so this may be a contributing factor aswell.

@TJET GPS - did you drive the car at speed and put the anchors on hard on your test drive?

Mine was fine as long as the road was level. However you quite often get 'rutts' in the road specially on heavily used motorway. This affects the car due to the alloys not being that wide.

I am going to be using mine for mainly motorway driving when it arrives, can't say I noticed anything un toward with the brakes on the test drive but to be fair I have been driving a old peugeot 405 that handles like a boat so the GPS will seem miles better. Thought it was supposed to have electronic brake distribution and other braking aids. Proves they are not that effective if the car is not engineered well

Electronic brake distribution can often be a hinderance rather than help if you are not used to the car.ie. pulling left and right then you try to correct it but the car corrects your correction and you get the idea.

Either way, I don't trust the stability of my sporting under harsh braking.


Still love her though

I really think that it's only a matter of time before.......like a car having to meet the minimum requirements in a crash test before a manufacturer is allowed to sell a car.....the "standard" will be raised as to how good a car 'feels' on front line stability, how much it 'tram lines' and also the dreaded
'wobbling' and unstable feeling when braking hard.
It's a hugely important issue for overall driver comfort and safety that I find is little talked about.

Mine can be a bit squirmy at times, especially if you jam the anchors on. Also, they can be quite noisy when you come down from high speeds.

Superboy said:

I really think that it's only a matter of time before.......like a car having to meet the minimum requirements in a crash test before a manufacturer is allowed to sell a car.....the "standard" will be raised as to how good a car 'feels' on front line stability, how much it 'tram lines' and also the dreaded
'wobbling' and unstable feeling when braking hard.
It's a hugely important issue for overall driver comfort and safety that I find is little talked about.

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Very true, I think this is a big safety issue which more than often gets overlooked. The grande is a ncap five star rated car yet is unstable under heavy braking.

Things like brakes are very important on a car. People are so quick to quote their 0-60 and bhp figures they forget the brakes are the most important.

Whooooa guys... it FEELS a bit iffy maybe... but is it REALLY iffy?

Doesnt the EBD do a similar thing to braking as what Traction control does to acceleration? We just FEEL it more when braking very hard... and to be truthful, unless its a motorway emergency we shouldnt really be pushing that hard... unless its a race car and then the Team would do "something" with it.

I dont feel unsafe in my GPS, only experienced it once in 9.5k miles and 6 months.

puntokris said:

@TJET GPS - did you drive the car at speed and put the anchors on hard on your test drive?

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lol i hit them quiete hard.

if you brake hard enough, the EBD does make the car squirm... I'd rather it didn't have it...

regardless though, I think the brakes a well up to the job

What doesn't help is the rather heavy engine and gearbox in front and next to nothing in the rear.

Oldschool said:

What doesn't help is the rather heavy engine and gearbox in front and next to nothing in the rear.

Click to expand...

Thats also a point I which can often be the case in alot of diesel cars, very front heavy.

I have noticed a little bit of a light front end in harsh braking, but today on the M40 coming down from 70 I had to do a full on emergency brake , something I have (Luckily) never had to do before. It did squirm, but I am still here to tell you all about it. I'd rather have that than be crammed up the a*se of a 4x4....

I went to fiat on saturday so they could sort out the knocking noise, I though it was a drop link (which is a common replacement on the grande)

Turns out I need a new steering rack. I love fiats.