Brakes were disconnected, BG Automotive president says
(Clifford Atiyeh/Globe Photo)
After my surprise drive of the BG C100 - a Chinese subcompact retrofitted with an electric powertrain that will be sold by a Philadelphia company - I wrote that the "very firm pedal felt as if the brakes were disconnected." Well, turns out they were, according to BG Automotive president Barry Bernsten.
"I called my engineers and they advised on where we can check for problems, and sure enough, I noticed a wire was disconnected that triggers the pump that controls the disc brakes," Bernsten wrote in an e-mail this morning. "I reconnected the wire, and the brakes worked like butter. The brakes worked perfectly and stopped dead when we slammed them on, unlike the slower stop when you test drove."
I asked the company about the issue after a reader posted a comment yesterday claiming the brakes were at fault, and that Bernsten had fixed them. This would make the C100 a lot safer than during my test, when the car had difficulty stopping from 10 miles per hour. Better for Bernsten to scare a writer in a parking lot, I'd say, than a customer who just wrote a $16,000 check.
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about boston overdrive
Boston.com reports the latest trends, auto shows and wrings out the newest cars in our city's hellish maze - and across the great roads of New England.In the garage: 2008 MBTA Zone 1A monthly pass, 1995 21-speed Iron Horse. Bill Griffith is an automotive correspondent for The Boston Globe and has reviewed cars for 10 years. He was also the Globe's assistant sports editor for 25 years and the paper's sports media columnist.
In the garage (over the years): 1956 T-Bird, 1959 Nash Metropolitan, 1980 El Camino, 1997 supercharged Camry TRD.
