The continuing increase of routinely available computing power now allows optimization based on the use of objective functions including time domain simulations of vehicle dynamics. This dissertation uses commercially available code in this way to gain insight into perturbations of the roll-inducing vehicle tests designed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It then develops much faster code for the purpose of examining a more general set of steering controls with the goal of very large transient lateral load transfer. These optimizations indicate that the NHTSA procedures are well suited to meet their goals. The Conclusion and Future Work chapter indicates that the techniques presented here are applicable to a wide array of other vehicle dynamics problems.