A 2007 Audi A3, with its electronic stability control switched off, goes around and through traffic cones on a test course. Below, David Champion, senior director at Consumer Reports’ automotive test center, drives a MazdaSpeed 3 onto the test track.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

EAST HADDAM, Conn. It was certainly one way to find out about electronic stability control.

Swaddled in seat belts and a massive crash helmet, I sat in the passenger seat of an Audi A3 2.0T as David Champion, Consumer Reports’ senior director of automobile testing, drove it through an avoidance maneuver test that involved swerving out of a driving lane marked with small orange cones and then back into it at about 50 mph.

A large orange cone played the part of a child or dog that had run out into the road.

The first time, Champion drove with the ESC switched on; then he did it with the ESC off. The good news is that we never hit the cone/child/animal, but the difference in overall control was staggering.

Armed with ESC, which applies brakes to one or more wheels to keep it under control, the car certainly lurched violently as it was jerked through the extreme turns. But Champion made it back into the driving lane without losing control.

However, with the ESC switched off, he was unable to get the car back into the driving lane and ended up lurching one way and then the other as the car effectively skidded off the road and ended up facing the wrong way in the wrong lane. And Champion is a very good driver indeed.

“It really was out of control,” he said. “We missed the kid but hit the car coming the other way.”

“It’s the best safety feature since seat belts,” he added, citing studies that have found it increases safety by 30 percent. Indeed, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ruled that all new vehicles must include the technology as standard equipment by 2010.

“It’s extremely important for young drivers,” Champion said, noting that they were often involved in accidents that featured a single vehicle, excessive speed and loss of control. “ESC has the biggest effect in those cases,” he said, adding that the focus on driver training needs to be combined with making cars safer, too.

Champion, a Brit, started his career with the British auto light company Lucas, which has a mixed reputation in the United States; he jokingly referred to it as the “Prince of Darkness.” He then spent nearly 15 years in Phoenix, with Land Rover, testing the vehicles in such extreme environments as California’s Death Valley in the summer, and Alaska and Timmins, Ontario, in the winter. He was then a senior engineer with Nissan for three years before taking on his current job in 1997.

Consumer Reports is the public face of Yonkers, N.Y.-based Consumer Union, which publishes a monthly magazine, buying guides and a Web site.

Stability control is just one of about 50 tests that Champion and his team put vehicles through at its automobile test track to come up with their assessments. He subsequently took me on a number of additional tests, including a braked descent down an earth slope, a climb up a rocky slope in a Toyota Tundra and a couple of full-speed (105-to-65 mph) turns around the windy race track in a Mazda Speed3.

“We push the car to what [it] is advertised to do and find out if it has any nasty habits,” he said.

His team also sends out surveys to about 5 million Consumer Reports subscribers and sifts through nearly 1 million responses, he said.

The result is “deep data” that provides a comprehensive overview of a vehicle’s performance and history.

The data is not only deep. It is wide, as Consumer Reports tests every vehicle on the market except super expensive cars like Ferraris and Rolls-Royces. Communications director Matt Fields said a Dodge Viper was the most exotic car the facility has tested, while a $100,000 Mercedes SL 550 was the most expensive.

The detailed results, which are a must for anyone seriously interested in researching new and used vehicles, also take into account safety findings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the NHTSA and are published in its magazine, buying guide and online. Fields said Consumer Reports’ Web site has been up for about eight years and currently has 3 million subscribers at $26 a year. The auto report is published annually in the April issue of its magazine.

Champion acknowledged that the findings do not take into account such intangibles as styling, and he said not everyone will be delighted by the results. Consumer Reports’ assessment of the Dodge Nitro, for example, is not good and it is easy to imagine a Dodge salesman dismissing the findings as invalid.

However, if the customer turned his or her attention to the Charger or Durango, the same Dodge salesman might be more inclined to offer Consumer Reports’ “Recommendations” as independent proof of the quality of the vehicles.

Certainly, Consumer Reports prides itself on its independence. It famously accepts no advertising and the closest it gets to auto manufacturers is to host visits to the testing facility here to demonstrate what tests the vehicles are subjected to.

Indeed, Champion and his team buy the test vehicles anonymously from dealers all over New England and down the East Coast as far as North Carolina. They all takes turns as buyers — they purchase some 85 vehicles a year and pose as typical buyers as they buy the most representational models of the cars they intend to test. They sell them after testing for a total loss of about $1 million.

The vehicles are driven for 2,000 miles by the employees at the facility as everyday cars before being tested.

Champion said if he’s driving a test car, he finds it hard to get away from his work, always asking himself questions about its comfort and performance. “I’ll take the kids out and ask them whether they think the back seats are comfortable,” he said. “And they say, ‘Ahh Dad, we’re just going to the movies!’ ”

After 2,000 miles, during which time drivers enter observations on formal entry forms, the vehicle goes to the team of eight engineers for a thorough going over to make sure it is in top condition before it is tested.

It then runs a gamut of tests, including on its headlights (intensity, range, width, etc.), trunk space, comfort and, of course, performance.

Consumer Reports acquired the 327-acre former site of the Connecticut International Dragway in 1986 and has added “a serpentine race track,” steep slopes of earth and rocks, and a specialized piece of track that is engineered to hold a thin layer of water on its surface to test for hydroplaning.

A circular track tests for the lateral forces on a car as it is driven.

“I hold it at its limits,” said senior auto engineer Jake Fisher as he kept a Nissan Infiniti G35 at a steady 40 mph as it went round the circle track and an instrument and computer measured the forces at work. “Nice and steady at the limits.”

Another track, split between tarmac and concrete, tests the ability of the antilock brakes to accommodate different braking surfaces.

“It’s a good test for antilock brakes,” said Champion. “The wheels on one side are doing all the work. We measure the stopping distance and the pull on the steering.”

Overall, the facility keeps cars for about seven months and puts about 7,000 miles on them.

In order to maintain the various testing tracks, the facility has an extensive range of equipment capable of doing all the necessary track work, from laying down new asphalt to a jet engine blower used to dry the track.

The facility also tests tires — to the tune of $400,000 a year — for such criteria as braking on ice, traction in the snow, noise and wear. It also tests child safety seats, ever since a public relations disaster last year in which it withdrew an infant seat report because the NHTSA raised questions about the speed at which the tests were conducted. Child safety seats were formerly tested in Yonkers.

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