I can speak, firsthand, about how absolutely horrible the Prius’s TCS is. A family member had one, which I often borrowed when my cars were in the shop, or when I just didn’t feel like driving around on rock-hard suspension and dealing with a race clutch…

Absolutely awful. If I went hammer-down, trying to pull onto a street from a driveway, for example, the car would just cut power. There is, however, a legitimate reason, although it’s just a different kind of stupidity on Toyota’s part. Evidently, wheelspin can over-rev the electric motor, which can cause damage.

I probably hold the honor of the only person in history to have done a timed lap in a Prius (I won’t say where!), and discovered that it actually isn’t a terrible chassis, the CoG is very low (thanks to the batteries), and it’s reasonably responsive. I lapped only 20% slower than I do in the WRX, but it took a lot of, well, confusing the car’s systems. See, the trick is to work faster than the TCS’s brain can.

What you have to do is out-think the car. It’s concerned with front-wheel traction. So, the trick is to force the car to oversteer without the car figuring it out. A combination of weight-transfer and perfect braking, to lock the rear wheels, can accomplish this, and you’re sideways by the time TCS kicks in. Here’s where it gets brilliant… The drivetrain disconnects, which causes freer control of the slide, and sometimes it even applies braking. This braking is actually pretty intelligent, and is good at reigning the car back into a straight line.

I’ll admit that I had a bit too much fun with that car once I figured this out. I used to be a very “active” canyon driver, and had a lot of drivers ask me for instruction. Imagine the surprise when I showed up with the Prius! However, the car was big and slow, which made it great as a “lead” car for teaching lines, and one incident does stand out in my mind, where the owner of a modified Miata was very surprised to see a Prius appear behind him, sideways! Wasn’t so surprised when he realized that he knew the driver… Also, an incident where I was bored, and chased down a 3rd-gen Eclipse (not exactly the paragon of performance cars itself, of course), and managed to get him to let me pass!

Such days of hooliganism are long-over, of course.