AbstractA classical and a ‘quasi‐modern’ approach are taken to develop robust control laws for the 1992 ACC benchmark problem of Wie and Bernstein. In both approaches, copious use of loop‐shaping à la Bode design is employed. The quasi‐modern approach reported herein is a zero‐placement technique, which is a variant on LQG/LTR. This approach allows for the direct selection of the zeros of the loop transfer function, leading to the desired loop shape. Therefore, undesirable pole‐zero cancellations may be avoided. The modern and quasi‐modern approaches are closely related, and can lead to similar control laws. Though the problem addressed here is SISO, the zero‐placement approach can be used on MIMO systems. However, in the case discussed herein, the classically designed controller has superior performance and st