top gear
BF Veteran
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,257
From: SW Central OH
I am almost giving up on History and discovery channel new programming.
Did they have the VW Beetle on there? They should have. The 60's era Beetle was a death trap in any collision at speed except from the rear and it wasnt that great there.
The front end was a series of triangles and boxes and had absolutely NO Crush properties. My Brother in law died because of that. He was driving down a secondary road at night and some drunk yay-whoo's 59 Impala had stopped and was sitting in the road no lights on. He squarely hit it at about 45 mph, driving the Impala's bumper under its rear window {no fire, btw} in a perfect arc matching the beetle front end.
The Beetle's front structure pushed back less than 6 inches. If you think that's a good thing, you're wrong. He had severe chest injuries from the steering wheel but died three days later of massive brain damage from hitting his forehead on the windshield - roof cowl.
If hit from the side at high speed, the occupants typically died of either broken necks or head injuries.. again, because it was built like a strong-box.
What I'm pointing out is that a car has to have room for crush and crumple zones. If it werent for the Impala's design My bro-in-law would have died instantly, same as if he'd hit a wall at 25 mph or so. On the other hand if he'd been driving a Corvair or Falcon of the time he would probably have lived.
I dont suppose the History Channel idiots said anything about that
Did they have the VW Beetle on there? They should have. The 60's era Beetle was a death trap in any collision at speed except from the rear and it wasnt that great there.
The front end was a series of triangles and boxes and had absolutely NO Crush properties. My Brother in law died because of that. He was driving down a secondary road at night and some drunk yay-whoo's 59 Impala had stopped and was sitting in the road no lights on. He squarely hit it at about 45 mph, driving the Impala's bumper under its rear window {no fire, btw} in a perfect arc matching the beetle front end.
The Beetle's front structure pushed back less than 6 inches. If you think that's a good thing, you're wrong. He had severe chest injuries from the steering wheel but died three days later of massive brain damage from hitting his forehead on the windshield - roof cowl.
If hit from the side at high speed, the occupants typically died of either broken necks or head injuries.. again, because it was built like a strong-box.
What I'm pointing out is that a car has to have room for crush and crumple zones. If it werent for the Impala's design My bro-in-law would have died instantly, same as if he'd hit a wall at 25 mph or so. On the other hand if he'd been driving a Corvair or Falcon of the time he would probably have lived.
I dont suppose the History Channel idiots said anything about that
Last edited by pettyfog; Feb 29, 2012 at 08:22 AM.
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Junior Member
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 371
From: indiana
well the show top gear very good they guys were not just there to bash the 3 autos and there was mention of other vehicles in the past like beettles ford festiva and they dog the **** out of the cars they do there challenges with always none of the challenges are real life situations on occasion they are but mostly not when tanner rolled the samurai he was doing a sloam course the pinto burt into flames after crash up derby the corvair survived all the abuse and drove off the derby field
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