Saw the new '07 Sebring Thursday

So you're telling me that crumple zones and were so developed then as they are now? Internal cabin design to minimise injury?

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

There were huge improvements made in the 1960s, with only incremental changes since then. By the early 1970s cars had side-impact beams, collapsible steering columns, and, yes, designed-in crumple zones along with active safety features like vastly improved brakes compared to a decade earlier.. Is it *as* advanced as a modern car? No. The modern car is able to get comparable levels of survivability with less material. But the difference is probably less than the difference between a modern small car and an SUV. To put it another way, my crumple zone isn't as well designed as a Honda's, but I've got a *lot* of crumple zone.

Going over to the NHTSA's crash test data site, I compared a 1979 Newport (that was the earliest I could find; the 1979 was a redesign going to Chrysler's old mid-size platform, so it's a smaller car than my 1978) against a 2006 Civic. The only directly comparable data was head injury; for the Newport, head injury indexes in left and right front seats were 897 and 106. They tested two Civics and only gave information for left side front and rear for both. For one, left side front head injury criterion was 237 and rear was 751; for the other, the numbers were 356 and 355. So the Honda scores better, but they are close enough to have substantial overlap -- my passenger is in better shape than the Honda's driver.

Incidentally, results for a 1979 Honda Civic showed head injury criteria of 2029 and 2095 for front left and right seats.

I accept your point about much of the progress having been made by the early seventies, though I wonder if all the features actually helped (side-impact beams are good only if designed correctly) but, anyway, the NHTSA's facts speak for themselves.

It is interesting that you should take a Japanese car for comparison. When I was following European crash test results in the nineties (usually conducted by consortia of leading motoring organisations and trade mags or newspapers) the Japanese cars performed poorly compared with European models, and some European models performed markedly worse than others. 'American' cars (i.e. those made in the USA as opposed to made by American-owned companies) were never tested because there were too few of them being sold.

However, within a product line there would usually be improvements so that, e.g. I would expect a Chysler of today (or of 5 years ago) to perform significantly better than one of 20 years ago in safety and handling.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

True.

Dubious. The jury's still out about the efficacy of frontal "air bags" in frontal collisions. All other mandated safety gear on 20 year old Chrysler products had been in place since the '70s...collapsing steering columns, padded surfaces, blunt control stalks, and so on. Of course, lap and shoulder belts had been mandated for some time.

One area where all US cars were weak at that time, especially certain Chryslers, was in side impact protection. Earlier M-bodies, then favored in police fleets nationwide, were notorious for side impact intrusion into the passenger cabin.

Side impact beams have been a required feature for a long time, at least back to the early 1970's. I doubt if they would still be required equipment all these years if they were not effective. Side air bags are an optional additional layer of protection in newer cars.

Yes, a vehicle produced today is likely to be safer than one produced 20 years ago, however, the mere fact that a car is 20 years old does not necessarily make it unsafe.

Why NOT do that? My daily driver is a '66 Dodge Polara

Old-fashioned brakes,

Nonsense. His Newport has disk brakes, and my Polara has been converted to disk brakes (from a '73 Newport, incidentally). My Polara stops as fast as my wife's 1993 car with ABS does.

Absurd. Side-impact beams became mandatory in the early 70s, as did "5 mph bumpers." Collapsible steering columns and crumple zones date back to the mid 60s. Plus we have mass on our side.

ROTFL! You really don't know much about older American cars, do you? Seat belts became mandatory in the 60s, shoulder belts in '68 (optional prior to that). And not having a bomb aimed at your chest is a *good* thing.

Chrysler stopped making ANYTHING with front drums in the early 70s. MOST of their vehicles had front disks back to around 68/69, some earlier than that.

Not quite, but close. And back then, there was a lot more cabin (and non-cabin) space to work with, so things could move much further before causing harm.

Internal cabin design to minimise injury?

Yes, very much so. By federal law, dating back to the mid 60s. Padded dash, knee bolsters, side-impact beams, collaspible steering wheels/columns, etc. All date to the mid/late 60s.

We had a '61 Ford Fairlane up until 1979, so I remember it well. The interior was not a crash-friendly place. The car would have been ok, but the occupants would take a beating.

Hmm... I actually wasn't trying to either pick on the Japanese nor find the worst car I could for comparison. I just keep hearing Honda held up as a pinnacle of engineering that they seemed the obvious comparison.

I just got a 'fridge magnet from rockauto.com with a hot looking '66 Polara on it...yours?

"Bad brakes" went away on Chrysler products when they finally dumped Lockheed brakes in 1957.

Benefits of air bags, except in the fastest frontal crashes, are dubious, at best. Iacocca was dead set against them for years, not because he was anti-safety (he was pro-safety, going back to the '56 Ford) but the data showed they were simply ineffective and caused injury at medium and low speed collisions that wouldn't have happened with properly worn lap/shoulder belts. What they ARE effective at is lining the pockets of certain second tier auto industry suppliers.

The move to air bags was due to many states, notably in the South, which refused, until strongarmed by Washington, to enact mandatory seat belt laws. California has had one for many years, and the rightards went berserk over it..."it's my right to drive unsafely," blah blah blah, just like the biker bums and their helmets. They were beaten into submission...like they will be again on Nov. 7. There's only so much reasoning you can do with a flock of paranoid delusionals addicted to bad talk shows before you have to just whump them a good one!

They got rid of most of their R&D staff shortly thereafter, so _everything_ got bad on Chrysler products. It's why they were such a joke in the '60s and '70s.

From what I have read in NGs and elsewhere there seems an important difference between US and RoW airbags. In RoW, so I gather, they are smaller as they are 'only' supplementary to seat belts (hence SRS --supplementary restraint system -- logo on the cover). For them to be fully effective seat belts must be worn.

When were inertial-reel seat belts introduced in the US?

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

It's the same in the US. "Airbags" are an SRS, and can only be used with proper lap/shoulder belts in use to be effective.

Early 1970s. Prior to that, they were adjustable belts with rectractile storage from 1966 on. Prior to that, from the '50s, optional seat belts had no retractile storage. My dad had optional seat belts on his '62 Cadillac, but they DID have retractors, as they did on various Pontiacs I've seen from that era. I have seen 1956 Ford Thunderbirds with factory seat belts as well, probably an option mandated by Iacocca, who probably back then, was the only believer in seat belts at Ford. King Henry II was dead set against them, as "they cost money." Another seat belt believer was John De Lorean, who promoted their availability in Pontiacs after he got there after leaving Chrysler circa 1956.

Yeah, but the original pitch for airbags was that they were supposed to protect idiots who didn't use a seatbelt, with the result that they were powerful enough to stop that idiot from going into the windshield. At some point between mandating them and them actually going into production there was a "discovery" that they were supplemental-only; it was several years before the requirements were modified to reflect that fact.

Definitely true of EARLY (circa 1993) US airbombs. The later ones are closer to ROW, but the regulations over here are not quite sane on many safety devices.

That's 100% true of ALL airbombs- because they don't really do much at all, the seatbelt is the real safety device.

1974. Up to 1973, shoulder belts were fixed length and had to be cinched down just like lap belts did. When used correctly, a fixed belt is safer than inertia-reel type belts, but most people left them loose and floppy so they could reach the radio controls easily :-p 1974 was also the year of the disastrous seatbelt-starter interlock fiasco. Both front-seat passengers HAD to be buckled for the car to start. The system was so trouble-prone and cars would refuse to start that the law was amended and the systems were allowed to be bypassed within the first half of the model year! There was an override button under the hood that gave you 30 seconds to get back in and start the car, but consumers were NOT pleased with having to use it all the time.

Somehow I doubt this. The insurance companies in the US are an incredibly powerful political force. If airbags didn't actually work, the insurance companies would be screaming bloody murder since they're expensive. Their lobbyists would have already arranged to change any laws that required airbags.

TRUE, long with my "new" 05 sebring convertable I still keep my 89 olds ciera 210k miles for the weekday work trip, I junked the 86 aries in

05 and got the sebring in it's place

American Cars are the BEST

before I got my 89 olds Ciera (which I still use) I had a new 81 Accord, that was my only import and my only P O S. I had to junk it in 89 due to dealer service could not get the carb to not screw up and foul the plugs every month or so.

I've bought all my cars new and keep em till they're only suited for the junk yard