Crash Test: '59 Chevy vs. '09 Chevy (not pretty)

[YARIS!]

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...009-chevy.aspx

The Chevrolet Bel Air was the Toyota Camry of its time -- affordable, stylish and roomy -- and the best-selling car in America in 1959.

It was 17 1/2 feet long, nearly 7 feet wide and weighed more than 3,600 pounds. Mileage? Gas was 25 cents a gallon, and even if the EPA had been invented, no one would have cared.

The 2009 Chevrolet Malibu, by comparison, is a tidy 16 feet long and nearly a foot narrower. Its 2.4-liter, four-cylinder engine gets 26 mpg highway/city combined, and it exhausts cleaner air than most baby boomers ever inhaled.

Here is what happens when the two meet.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an insurer-supported research group, brought the two together to demonstrate in dramatic fashion the improvements in car safety since its 1959 founding. The offset collision test pits two vehicles at 40 mph.

The driver in the Bel Air, its engineers concluded, would be in sorry shape. The car lacked seat belts, let alone air bags, allowing the driver to strike the unforgiving steering column, unpadded dashboard and roof. The passenger compartment collapsed, crushing the crash dummy's legs. The seat was torn from the floor. The windshield popped out and the doors opened, possibly allowing the driver to be ejected.

On the other hand, the driver of the Malibu might have sustained an injury to his left foot, analysis of test data showed, but otherwise emerged unscathed.

What changed in a half-century? The insurance institute cites the crush protection engineered into new cars, dissipating the energy in a controlled manner so that seat belts and air bags have time to do their jobs.

The '59 is an absolute death trap. It crumples like the worst cars from China! I thought these old cars were tanks without much crumple zone at all but it turns out the whole cabin was a crumple zone. Geez.

Anyone who owns an antique better keep it under 15 mph!

[IS350jet]

It's funny how some people actually feel safer behind the wheel of old domestic iron. "They don't build them like they used to"......They sure don't!

[TripleL]

This test doesn't surprise me at all,, we've come a long way in 50 years and it shows. Very good and needed progress.

Originally Posted by IS350jet

It's funny how some people actually feel safer behind the wheel of old domestic iron. "They don't build them like they used to"......They sure don't!

I really haven't heard that in years,, but I think you'll find that someone that says this was probably around in the early 80s (like myself) when in my humble opinion this was not a thought process but a fact. Take that 59 Belvadere and run it into a 1980 Malibu (or an 80 Accord or Corolla for that matter) like they did in the video, then notify the next of kin. Thank goodness for the progress we've had since then.

[Och]

Watching that video made me realize why hoods on modern cars generally feel light and flimsy... because they will crumple during a crash instead of going through the windshield.

[JessePS]

I would love to see a '59 Chevy vs. '09 Smart car lol

[YARIS!]

Originally Posted by JessePS

I would love to see a '59 Chevy vs. '09 Smart car lol

The Smart would win hands down.

Here's a MB C-class head to head with a Smart and notice that the Smart's cabin is fully intact after the collision. Amazing. Sure it get's launched a bit but the safety cage is incredibly strong. So even with no hood, there's a good chance you'll leave in good shape after an accident.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...sh-test-9-2009

[<VENOM>]

Originally Posted by YARIS!

The Smart would win hands down.

The driver would be the biggest loser, I could only imagine what the body is going through inside that hamster ball

[Fizzboy7]

Originally Posted by YARIS!

The Smart would win hands down.

Here's a MB C-class head to head with a Smart and notice that the Smart's cabin is fully intact after the collision. Amazing. Sure it get's launched a bit but the safety cage is incredibly strong. So even with no hood, there's a good chance you'll leave in good shape after an accident.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...sh-test-9-2009

Interesting tests. The Fit and Yaris do much worse against their larger siblings.
At one time, old American iron was safer. But no longer true compared to today's new cars and safety standards. We are far more likely to walk out of an accident today than twenty years ago. Props to that.

[SoCalSC4]

I find it interesting that so often people associate size with safety.

I've heard people make statements about how they'd hate to be in my MR2 in an accident; the reality is this car is safer than bigger cars that are a decade older, and its' small size, excellent brakes, and maneuverability give an attentive driver a better chance of avoiding an accident in the first place.

It saddens me to hear ignorant generalizations.

I'd MUCH rather drive a car like a current Mini or a Yaris over a bigger car from the 80s. Engineers have learned A LOT from testing like this.

[<VENOM>]

Somehow I don't believe what Im seeing, at 1 minute into the video, the passengers side view when the fender pulls off the car, what is that rust/dust blowing out of the hole in the body of the car, is that whats left of the frame disintegrating

I wonder how much that paint job and interior cost, it looks just as new as the Malibu, the frame is probably swiss cheese, these are cars that take down telephone poles, yet it can't withstand an offset collision without killing the driver

[mmarshall]

Like him or not, we can thank Ralph Nader and his famous book "Unsafe at any Speed" (which I have in my automotive library, of course) for a number of the safety advances we have on modern cars. Starting in 1968, from legislation passed in 1966, more and more safety-related features were installed by automakers, either by government mandate or by general customer/market preference.

That's not to say that automakers completely ignored safety before the 1960's, but, in general, what few safety features they offered back then as options, like padded dashes, seat belts, and energy-absorbing steering columns, were generally ignored by consumers.....safety, despite a much higher accident/death rate then than now, just didn't sell. That began to change, however, when Nader entered the scene. But, even by the early 70's, a lot of people just didn't want to pay more for added safety. Lincoln and Imperial offered optional ABS on their 1971 models, and GM offered optional air bags on 1974 Oldsmobiles......yet got few takers.

[I8ABMR]

The old car were just not designed with safety in mind like they are today.

[mmarshall]

Don't forget, though.......we're talking about a difference here of 40 years in safety technology. All other things equal (in other words, with roughly the same amount of safety gear in both cars), the laws of physics and kinetic energy will prevail, and, in general, a larger, heavier car will be deformed less than a smaller, lighter car.

Case in point: The Smart-for-Two is very well-done, safety-wise, by modern standards, for a tiny car its size...but here is what happens when a Smart is run head-on into larger, heavier modern cars...in this case, a Mercedes C300:

[IS-SV]

No surprise given the advancements in safety technology over the last few decades, especially with frontal crash protection.