A vehicle dynamics control system has been developed in this study for improving vehicle dynamic stability under critical lateral motions. The system consists of a feedforward controller, a state feedback controller, and an estimator for the body sideslip angle. The linear quadratic regulator theory has been exploited for the state feedback gain, and for estimation of the body sideslip angle, a nonlinear observer has been developed. Simulations have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the closed loop system under various driving conditions, and the results will be presented in this paper. (C) 2001 Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc. and Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.