Are all classic cars this dangerous?

[Sp!ke]

Truly shocking video.

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[ACID]

Spike not all classics, i think the classic mercs are stronger then some of the new ones e.g the 123
but thats my opinion

acid

 

[IanT]

Agreed, not all are that bad, but safety has improved beyond measure in the 40odd years since that was built. And it was all about style then, no NCAP ratings to dilute the pleasure.

Ian.

 

[SSBB]

What a sad waste of a nice car (the Chevy)

 

[Will]

Ouch - that does look quite a mess doesn't it

I guess though, it is a 50 year old design. It's lucky to have not been crashed before now I guess!

Will

 

[EDZ649]

I think crumple zones on modern cars are amazing

 

[Barbanasos]

Thats too bad. It must have had a lot of rust or previous repairs; it crumbled a lot. Old cars used to have too stiff a chasis and did not absorb impact. This seems crazy.

 

[davidjpowell]

Shocking video, but interesting discussion. It's not aways too good a thing for a car to be too strong. I remember crash tests on the Volvo 740's. Not much deformation, but the forces passed through the seatbelts were enough to kill or at least seriously injure.

Modern cars may look as if they are weak, but the deformation zones, airbags and pretensioners mean that we stand a decent chance of coming out of a 30 MPH crash alive.

I changed my car a few months ago, going to a far cheaper and older vehicle. Travelling a fair few miles one of the 'must haves' for me was an Airbag. I hope never to use it, but I would like it to be ready.

 

[corned]

I think Fifth Gear did a crash test between a big Volvo estate of early '90s vintage and a current Renault clio or similar. They did a 40 mph offset crash and the expected result (Volvo mashes Clio) was completely reversed. The Volvo lost out badly. On the Clio, the damage stopped completely at the windscreen/front door, but the Volvo folded like paper in comparison.

Quite an eye-opener.

By the way, in the posted video, I don't see any evidence to suggest that the Chevy Bel-Air was rusty/repaired at all?

 

[lynall]

Even if it was rusty it was still a nice looking car Andy at work has one and he would cry seeing that.

Not sure what the point of the video was as surely everyone knows modern cars are much safer than they used to be?



Lynall

 

[lynall]

I think Fifth Gear did a crash test between a big Volvo estate of early '90s vintage and a current Renault clio or similar. They did a 40 mph offset crash and the expected result (Volvo mashes Clio) was completely reversed. The Volvo lost out badly. On the Clio, the damage stopped completely at the windscreen/front door, but the Volvo folded like paper in comparison

I remember top gear doing something similiar between an old tdi disco and a renault people carrier trying to show how bad 4x4s are/were, but renault whilst old was several years newer than the landie which got demolished.



Lynall

 

[grober]

Virtually all American cars of that era used a separate chassis and body construction partially to accommodate the almost yearly styling changes demanded then. Although this system of construction could stand high suspension loads it had very poor impact strength compared to contemporary monocoque structures of the time. Mercedes were at the cutting edge of safety design at this time with their 3 box /2 crumple zone design first developed by Béla Barényi in the 50's. The safety of American cars was only really developed after the legislative campaigns of Ralph Nader in the 60's Ralph Nader - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[JerryC200Cdi]

I know which I would prefer to have been in - those airbags definitely look to have saved the driver

 

[JohnDeere8530]

seat belts airbags and crumple zones are what saves a occupant of a car, not how strong it is.

You acutally want the car to crumple as much as possible, this dissapates the energy of the collision and reduces the deaccelertion forces on the occupants. (It is these forces that often kill, since your internal organs in a high g crash literally get ripped from your body or they smash into your skeleton.) Ie you want the car to stop in as long a period of time as possible, as opposed to instantly in a 'rigid car'. A car that crumples at the front will see its passenger zone deaccelerate more slowly than a car that has no crumple zones

In an ideal world you would want to see the car literally smashed to bits in a high speed crash but the passenger zone of the car to remain 100% intact. Seeing a car like a old landrover with hardly a dent on it after a biggish crash, is never good news for that driver do to the high deacceleration rate experienced by him. A crash at 40mph can see deacceleration rates of 20g, however in something likee the old landrover this can easily double to 40 or even 50g for a split second.

Also momentum of a vehicle is an important factor, since the deaccleration forces are proportional to the rate of change of momentum. As momentum is M * V a heavy car is less likely to have injured occupants in a crash than a lighter one. Since in a crash the heavy car's rate of change of momentum (ie neg g forces) will be far less than the smaller car. However this is not good news for the small car driver.

That aside, people assume that it is always best to get the biggest car to protect themselves in the event of a crash, ie the dreaded 4x4s. This to a large extent is true in a collision, but in reality the 4x4, due to its higher c of g, longer stopping distances and vastly inferior handling to a car will statistically much more likely to be involved in a collsion. This is why 4x4 insurance is far higher than a car's

 

[grober]

Much as I hate to rain on anyone's parade and aware that many folks on here are big fans of the cars I'm afraid the Mercedes G-WAGON falls into this category with its separate body chassis construction. It will have the advantage of modern driving aids such as ABS and the enhanced safety of airbag systems etc. but it has fairly crude utility military vehicle construction underneath. For some this will be an attraction of course just as long as people are aware they are pretty unsafe vehicles in a major collision by today's standards. They have never been tested by the usual safety agencies EURO NCAP NHTSA etc since they are classed as a commercial vehicle.

 

[blondebier]

I think Fifth Gear did a crash test ...
Quite an eye-opener.

I saw something similar where they simulated a crash at 70MPH.

It was between a SMART car and others. I think I recall one of them was a 124 saloon. You'd be quite relieved to have been in the 124.

If you had been in the SMART I don't think you would have survived.

 

[Mactech]

I think it illustrates just how far safety has moved on in 50 years. Humans seem to have made little or no advance in their ability to absorb big impacts, but not having a steering column through your head does improve your chance of survival.
As in motorsport, the number of accidents has increased in recent years but the survival rate has increased dramatically. I also think that the tendency in modern motorsport of the drivers taking greater risks in their strong cars on sanitised circuits has, to some degree, crept into everyday road driving.
Sometimes it seems the human brain is as diffucult to adapt as the human body

 

[NewMB]

That video really is WOW!!

Just goes to show how technology has moved on and that we are in a lot safer cars nowadays, but much faster cars though.

 

[Satch]

You should see the crash test results of some of the current offerings from Chinese car makers

Crash Test: Chinese Car, Brilliance BS6. - Car Videos on StreetFire

compared with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO7KIC4c8oI&feature=related

 

[BTB 500]

Or the Chrysler Voyager ...