To those who took offense at American cars being referred to as CRAP...

No offense to Canadians either, just because you are an asshole. So, what brand of Canadian car.... oh that's right, there are none.

SharkmanBMW wrote:

you obviously are an ignorant idiot

here you go, see for yourself!

and for the record, regardless of where I live, I am on my 3rd and 4th BMWs at the moment, I learned after driving American crap when i was younger.

So if i was American, nothing would be different, I don't see why you need to be bash a country, I bashed carmakers, NOT the USA, there is a big difference in the real world.

Guys, whoa! settle down.

I would say that watching the videos is very close to useless without seeing the data retrieved from the vehicle and especially, the dummy. Although it looks horrible when a car crumples, part of that is expending energy that will be energy your body doesn't have to deal with. I'm not saying I enjoyed watching the 2001 F150, shit, I own a 2000 model and it made me sick. The

2001 F150 is w/o a doubt, a horrible performer from the video, shit, the seat comes forward and smashes the damn driver! That one doesn't take a rocket scientist to decipher but I do believe most of them do. Think about it this way, a totally rigid car delivers 100% of the impact to the occupants. From there you can easily comprehend that it's not just about the visual, it's much more.

I would say that the full, tabulated results by the NHTSA would be much more useful than ooohhhing and aahhhhing over videos.

Just my 2 cents.

Chris

"SharkmanBMW" wrote

They're thinking how to be competitive in fuel economy:

Now, let's see if they can keep those hydraulic cylinders from going flying during a crash. :)

Pete

yes sir, and on the topic of a totally rigid car.... here you go! this is crazy, lol!

Or much else

twenty years ago I visited the west coast with my boss.

we got to stay over a weekend, so decided to hire a car to do some sight seeing in particular Mt. St. Helens. We went to a major car hire company. At the time my car was a BMW 735i with a 5 speed manual gearbox. I won't bore a BMW group with its qualities, but once I got it up to 145mph on the clock (with a yank in the passenger seat) and it was steady as a rock.

My boss wanted something a little sporty so we were offered two cars: -

a Pontiac Firebird 2 door coupe (IIRC), which I could not even fit into to drive

and

a Pontiac Grand Am 3.0 a car so poor that a brief description is warranted: -

engine - 3 litre V6 injection, with lots of pipework etc. under the bonnet. Its output was pathetic and that was before we clogged the air filters with volcanic dust. Thirsty.

gearbox - 3 speed automatic - nuf said

handling - appalling - on winding roads you had to open the window and listen for the tyres squealing to have any idea whether it was holding on (or more likely not).

Brakes - worked.

Comfort - two doors rear seats were a joke.

Probably one of the worst cars I have ever driven.

You can still buy one of these in the USA for ~$1500 second hand. Aside of resale I would not have paid this much for one then, when just about any car then built in the EU was better on every front.

US cars have improved over two decades, but the only ones I have seen marketed in the UK are the Neon (poor) and the PT cruiser (not much better). No wonder GM and Ford are in a spin in the USA.

Wow, this is veeeery important for this issue... How about just saying it; American cars with some exceptions (like Voyager, Cherokee, Corvette...) can be sold only on north American market. They are slow, they have extremely poor fuel economy, their suspension sucks, you name it, and no major market such as European or Japanese doesn't have them. Only two good thing; they are cheap and can stand solid mileage (an that's no wonder when you have 4,0 V8 with 200 hp :-D ) Are you so stupid to find this fact offensive?

-- It's a good idea to drive a little Japanese/Ford/whatever shopping machine once a year to remind yourself why you're in a BMW for the rest of the year. by John Burns. '98 328i coupe t.

Is this really so? Ford invented the Macpherson strut suspension and it appeared on some UK Fords in '50. If you meant IRS, you might be right - but a solid rear axle doesn't cause shimmy. Nor does a beam front axle either, come to that.

Well, technically true. There are no Canadian car *brands*, but there are multiple factory plants in Canada where they make those "shitty American cars", or part for the same.

1949 actually. As the car goes faster the angular momentum of the front axle increases. In a beam axle a deflection on one side will rotate the whole axle in the vertical plane, causing a [gyroscopically induced] turning force in the horizontal plane. The faster you go the worse it gets.

No just a bit of rear end steer and other undesirable effects.

Oh come on now!

A chap from Arkansas backwoods went to buy a car to take his mother, wife and sister out on trips and came back with a two seater...

Not as undesirable as early swing axle or semi trailing arm designs of IRS

- if that beam axle is well located.

Same comment applies. A beam axle on crude cart springs is a different matter.

Bullshit.

What are you talking about? The videos on their own mean nothing. What is important is the loads registered by the sensors on the crash dummy and the videos say nothing about those readings.

I looked through many of the videos you linked to and the most disturbing one was the Mini. in that one if the windows had been rolled up the dummy's head would have gone right through the side glass. Ouch!.

The Merc's structural rigidity was impressive, true enough. They obviously build their cars and trucks very strong. It appears that the U.S. car builders allow their crumple zones to extend into the roof area which the European's do not. (Exception, the VW Passat.)

That 7 series cost as much as the two Pontiacs together. I doubt that the Firebird was bigger than your 7-series. The 7's are not small cars and never were.

Spot on. That guy speaks from total ignorance. Utterly clueless...and no doubt proud of it.

That's why I stopped responding to him...

Hell, the original post was probably crossposted to as many different groups as he has access to. That being said, the idea of his post was never to have any kind of a dialogue. Just another idiot out to cause a ruckus and then sit back and watch...