Been A While Fabed New Bumpers

Careful there! Next thing you know you'll be held up as "unamerican" for questioning the nannies and their crush zones. Every think about how much of the new car price is due to crap mandated to protect us from ourselves?

Many years ago (while Nader was a demi-god), I was involved in a project to provide design testing for energy absorbing bumpers. We came up with what we thought was the ideal solution: fill empty beer cans with a specific expanded foam and use them for replaceable cartridges in a telescoping mount. Hit the tree, bumper pushes in a little with progressive resistance, bumper is a little cockeyed until you replace the beer can. Solved the crash problem and reduced waste but we were ahead of our times and no one thought it was practical then - and some even complained about our source of raw materials!

I can't see the tow hooks in the photos, that's why I was asking.

The front bumper has a winch and tow hooks, the rear has a class IV hitch with a 2 inch ball and a clevis hitch plenty of recovery points.

I still like this one. And it won't rust.

Wasn't Nader one of the bone heads that squashed the Chevy Corvair? They were great cars a head of their time too.

Brings a new meaning to sporting wood.

The irony of Nader's attack on the Corvair is that it shared a suspension pproblem with VW Bug. The independent rear suspension allowed the rear end to try and buckle under in a turn resulting in severe oversteer. I soiled a couple of seat covers learning about that trick - in both cars. Later designs reduced but never really eliminated it. By then, the Corvair was history, Raplh Nader was a folk hero - and the VW Bugs motored on. Still think Gov't control of auto design is a good idea???

"DougW" wrote I still like this one. And it won't rust.

"Coasty" wrote Brings a new meaning to sporting wood.

Nader went after the Beetle too. But the Beetle was such a cultural icon by that time that he got laughed out of town.

Oh, yeah! Gave new meaning to being scared $hitless! Of course, when Ford came out with the tin can design of the Mustang front end they were able to beef it up in the next model year and survive. History is full of examples of ideas that emerged half-baked. Some were corrected and survived, others were DOA. I still can't see any unibody design replacing a true ladder frame for true off-roaders and pretty convincing arguments can be made for solid front axles, especially when endurance and cost are factored in.

And yet the best a Corvette could do in a turn was .9g and the Corvair could do 1g. I had both and they were both a ball. Wish I had either one now as a toy... Also had a 64 GTO and it was not as much fun but it did go fast .. straight!

What kind of tires were on them that they could do that?