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'09 Malibu Vs. '59 Bel Air Crash Test
theodp writes "To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crashed a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air into a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. Hate to spoil the ending of the video, but if you find yourself participating in a similar car-jousting contest, pick the Malibu over the Bel Air. (Not that you'll be complaining afterwards if you don't, or doing much of anything.) Guess there is something to those crumple zones after all."
While I agree with your post, I'd like to point out that you mean kmph or km/h. kph would be kilos per hour... but kilos of what?
So they destroyed a CLASSIC CAR THAT STOPPED BEING MAGE 50 YEARS AGO just to celebrate their 50th anniversery?
Hope the asshats who made that decision aren't around much longer.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Note that the scores in the chart for Lexus (at 120) and Toyota (at 159) differ by about 30% even though both brands are built by the same company and by the same process. In other words, if two brands have scores that differ by, at most 30%, then they should be considered equal in quality.
Hence, any brand with a score of 210.675 (= 159 / 120 * 159) matches the quality of the Toyota brand. In other words, both brands produced by Ford Motor Company now equal the Toyota brand in quality. Also, Chevrolet, the core brand produced by General Motors, continues to be inferior to the Toyota brand.
Best of all, the price of a Ford vehicle is less, by several thousand dollars, than the price of a Toyota vehicle. If you value your hard-earned money, then buy a Ford Fusion instead of a Toyota Camry.
They went out of their way to avoid the engines colliding, because those inline 6 engines weigh a LOT. The video shows a front-left-fender vs front-left-fender collision. In a direct head-on crash, the Chevy's engine and transmission would cream the Malibus' much lighter engine/transaxle.
For this reason, the video is bogus.
No question about it, the engine thrashing about in an offset collision did a lot of damage. Of course, since the engine/transmission would be similarly free of any engine mounts in a head-to-head, but NOT being torqued sideways by an offset collision, a lot more energy would be directed to the Malibu instead of being diverted into helping disintegrate the Bel-air.
A realistic test would require a time machine - go forward into the future and find a 50-year-old Malibu. Of course, one of the problems with unit-body construction is that it's dependent on the shape and strength of the sheet-metal, and the continued integrity of the spot welds - there's no real frame. A 50-year-old Malibu, if you could get it to start, just might fail catastrophically at the first speed bump.
My number one would be:
1) No decapitated babies from overpowered airbags and no initial warnings because they were being fraudently sold as "safe" and "pillow-like."
But that wasn't funny. But then, Nader pushing unproven fixes that killed more than they saved isn't news. He was a pioneed of legislating on feelings and not science. Ever read "unsafe at any speed"? I did. It made me cry that this was the guy setting safely policy. Yes he did good, but he also did lots of bad as well. I think he saved more lives than he took, but I object to laws that require items causing fatalities, rather than making them optional. Airbags should have been sold as the explosives aimed at someone's face, and they should have been spec'd for belted passengers, not unbelted.
Learn to love Alaska
the test was set up.
the frame had been precut so it would be more dramatic
Wow. I'm surprised you have time for this slashdot claptrap. Maybe medicine doesn't have to eat your whole life after all... maybe there's time yet...
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