I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

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I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

Postby 89ARIES » Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:24 am

These has got me upset. For years, I believed an older car with thicker sheet metal could always survive an accident better than a new car designed to fall apart and crumple. In fact, in some cases
I witnessed an old car total a new car and drive away. This video might be rigged or is so skewed that is hard for me believe, but maybe its true!? :| :cry: :shock: :x First of all, the head on collision
between the 1957 Chevy BelAire and the modern 2009 jelly bean is more of a sideswipe and both cars were not collided on an even plane. Tell me what you think. Is this think skewed against the old car
deliberately or is this really true:

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/17/vide ... ern-malib/

uGH
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Re: I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

Postby 89ARIES » Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:32 am

oH YEAH, There might not be an engine in the Bel Air. It looks to unreal.
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Re: I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

Postby Silverbeard » Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:55 am

The intro said it had a motor. The BelAir probably had an inline six, so being hit off center, it only had the fenders, front wheel and some frame to impact with the new car that has the motor sideways, better passenger compartment protection, air bags and seat belts. So I agree, it was staged to show the new car is better, but in reality, the old car would have driven right over the top of the new one in a straight frontal impact.
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Re: I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

Postby dodgeariesguy » Wed Sep 23, 2009 1:03 am

This remind's me of the test I saw of a company seeing how a 1st gen K-Car would preform in an accident if it had an Air Bag, but it really just show's you how a 1st gen. preform's in an accident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxvE3ib6Us
Presenting the K-Car: THE KING OF ECONOMY CARS, LUXURY CARS, AND CONVERTIBLES!
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Re: I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

Postby Baron » Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:27 am

I saw that video on another forum- and its a 59 Chevy Bel Air, btw, which may seem insignificant until you watch another video that tries to explain away what happened. While it can't deny/disprove that new cars are definitely safer, there is one interesting little tidbit about that particular Chevy. It had a unique frame, called an X-frame, that was about the most unsafe frame there ever was- even in its day. Right behind the engine compartment- about where the passenger compartment started- the two sides of the frame supporting the motor curved in and joined, and from that point one single- yes, SINGLE- unit frame went down the center of the car to split again in time to make the two side frame components needed to mount the rear wheels. Turns out the weakest point was where everything joined together behind the engine compartment. So, basically, as was mentioned earlier, there was very little- and even less than normal, really- frame involved in the accident. That Malibu basically hit nothing but fender metal all the way back to the passenger area.

The opinion on the other forum was that in low speed collisions the huge behemoths of the past would come way out ahead as the victor, but in high speed collisions, they would come out the losers, big time- any of the modern new cars would be much safer for passengers in that kind of collision. I think I would have to agree with that assessment.

btw, even in the video of the Aries crashing, as bad as it looks, the car basically did what it was designed to do- the front end absorbed the impact and crumpled, and unlike that chevy used in the first video, the damage to the car really didn't go past the engine compartment, the passenger compartment pretty much stayed intact. Don't know if I would want to try it at the same impact as the Chevy video, though- which was the equivalent of a 70 mph crash, not the 35 mph crash shown in the Aries video.
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Re: I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

Postby taxiguy » Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:19 am

The pure size of a car does not matter in a collision at all, it's all about how it is designed. The '59 has no safety engineering in the body whatsoever (doesn't even have seatbelts for the passengers!). The Malibu has crumple zones and while it does have thinner and lighter building materials they are actually much stronger than in the '59. Overall newer cars simply absorb impacts much better due to advances in body integrity and engineering. Even an 80s car would preform better the old Chevy. It's wasn't manipulated or anything, that's just how it is.

I've never thought of safety as terribly important myself, of course I don't want something as unsafe as that old Bel Air but the new one seems like overkill. Something in between seems more practical. Seatbelts and an airbag for each passenger, ok. But side impact, side curtains, isn't it all a bit unecessary not to mention expensive and weight-adding? People should focus more on preventing collisions in the first place rather than making overweight sedans that crash like armored tanks.

I've always wondered what a K-car (or any 80s car) would be like in a collison in relation to newer automobiles. Sadly tests from the 1980s are impossible to compare to newer crash tests becuase before the mid-1990s they were always done full-frontal instead of the offset way they do them now, so there's absolutely no way you can compare them to each other. Maybe in 30 years they'll do another crash using a "50-year-old" '89 Reliant and a 2039 Malibu and then we can see how they stack up :lol:
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Re: I thought old cars were stronger in accidents. Upsetting vid

Postby 82Lebaronconv » Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:38 pm

This stunt was a tragic waste of a perfectly good vintage car. Personally, I'd like to see the person who thought this one up strapped into the front seat of a new Toyota Prius, and then be broadsided at about 80 mph by a Peterbuilt. Wonder how that test would turn out.

There are plenty of period videos out there which show how poorly vintage cars performed in crash tests. I remember seeing these in Driver's Ed back in high school in the 1970's. Some time ago, I purchased a video of a highway safety film made back in the late 50's showing test collisons between cars of that era. Everyone knows that old cars are not that safe and we don't need a stunt like this to remind us. Last summer, there was a tragic accident here in Connecticut involving a 1954 Buick in which a 22 year old woman was killed. She and her boyfriend were coming back from a car show when he lost control of the car and hit a guardrail. Very sad.
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