“In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a ’59 Chevrolet Bel Air was crashed into an ’09 Chevrolet Malibu.”
…..
Thank you to Robert Loch
Crash Test: 1959 Bel Air vs. 2009 Malibu
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Surprising. I assumed cars from the 50′s were solid steel and modern cars were flimsy aluminum and composite materials. I was expecting the Chevy Bel Air to destroy the Malibu.
Modern car passenger compartments are made of Ultra High Strength Steel, 3 times stronger than the so-called mild steel of the old cars. 110,000 psi vs only 35,000 psi tensile strength. It’s only the fenders and hood that are “flimsy”. The rest is way stronger.
Brilliant! Now make traffic look more Pleasantville and we’ll have the best of both worlds!
Try that with a ’59 with a frame in it,no way that barge folded up like that ,was is time warped to the present ?? If you could find a b
no way ,give me a time warped 59 and I will be fine in that test
I would love to see them do this with a 1959 VW bug and a 2009 Bug.
Wonderful: a time crash!
Why can’t we have safe cars and cool tail fins?
IIHS site states 40mph; I assume each vehicle – i.e. 80mph collision
Can’t believe they trashed a mint 1959 Chevy like that. Unbelievable vandalism!
hey there, how is the performance of chevrolet malibu?
At least the 1959 driver would have died in a good looking car, not a piece of modern junk.
‘At least the 1959 driver would have died in a good looking car, not a piece of modern junk.”
And in the 1950s, a well known car collector who collected 1920s and 1930s cars said that he hated the new 1950s cars “because they have no soul”….seems that ever other generation makes that claim, but moves it up a couple of decades….before you know it, in the year 2041, there will be people saying how great the cars of the early 2000′s were, and how the new cars are so dull….
That’ll polish out with a bit of T-cut…
There’s a longer, raw version of this out there with in-car footage. Suffice it to say that when they state the ’59 driver “would’ve been killed almost instantly”, what they mean is “the test dummy was impaled on the steering column”.
The test was rigged to give a desired result. The frame on the 59 was cut almost clear through, so that it would fold up like this for the photos….
@ Jodi, who wrote, “I assumed cars from the 50′s were solid steel.” Well, you assumed right. But that was precisely the problem with those old cars: being solid. Nowadays, only the internal “cage” is supposed to be solid, while all external parts are designed to be “flexible”, in the sense that they must absorb the crash energy as much as possible.
The commentors stating that the tests were rigged, frame cut, etc – just guessing or know this? Just seems really hard to believe they would “rig” a test like this. If anything, I think they aligned the cars for the “perfect” head-on where the energy went more along the side of the car than directly head-on, allowing the newere car crush zones to be in full effect, while hitting the older in it’s weakest point. Straight head-on, who knows what it would look like. But, still a valid test as many (most?) headons look pretty similar to this.
No slicing of the frame required; the ’59 car is an “x-frame” model, which were notorious even back in the day for folding up into steel origami. When this clip first appeared, a lot of people were accusing IIHS of stacking the deck by choosing an x-frame, as it was one of the worst designs ever from a crash safety standpoint.
A more interesting test would have been to pit the modern car against a Chrysler of that era.
The Malibu driver would have worn a seatbelt, a collapsing steering column and maybe even had an airbag… the Belaire driver would have had none of these things. The biggest reason he’d have been the driver that died.
Notice the large clouds of rust dust on impact. I suspect the frame of the Bel Air was less than structurally sound.
I have two things to add to this conversation.
First, it’s very sad that so many people seek conspiracy when faced with evidence that contradicts what they “know” to be true. An allergy to evidence is detrimental to society.
Second – I’m an auto rescue technican – I cut people out of cars after a crash. Not only are new cars better than old cars in a crash (from my own personal experience as well as from the training I’ve had) older cars -especially the behemoths of the 50′s – were especially deadly because of their design. Implement from the steering column was a common way to slowly die.
In the days before crumple zones, before boron steel, before so many of the innovations that have reduced car accident fatatilies so much in the last 30 years, you were basically riding in a dumpster with pipes welded to the interior pointed at your chest.
Agree. We are far better off today in safety, comfort, mileage, and (sometimes, but not always) maintenance costs.
It’s a shame that they would destroy a classic car for the sake of a commercial.
I had read where the engine was removed from the ’59. I looked at the various views and I can’t be sure if the engine was there or not. But it does appear that the whole engine compartment just crumpled. And I did not see the engine displaced under the car or to the side.
The fluffy dice at 1:18 were a nice touch
What a waste of a beautiful classic car.
Yet, people still die in crashes — because of complacency, I believe. Modern cars are so comfortable and boast of such safety measures that their operators feel like they’re cruising along in their living rooms and forget to drive.
I have a ’65 El Camino, and lemme tell ya, I’m aware when I drive it. Like the ads in the ’60s said, “Drive defensively — watch out for the other guy.”
To put it in a different perspective, if we were still driving (in the United States)the same old technology from the 50′s in cars today based on miles driven, the yearly death toll would be 4 or 5 times what it is actually today (35,000-40,000 deaths per year).