That Bel Air gets pwned!

Happy Birthday IIHS - Awesome way to commemorate. I hope you've scooped up a few more 1959 models. I can't wait to see them vs a 2034 model (75th birthday) and a 2059 model (100th birthday).

Breaking things is cool. Finally an acceptable use for Youtube.

I don't care, the Bel Air still looks better than that Malibu. Admit it.

I'm not impressed. It's 2009. That Malibu should be flying around in the air, powered by Mr Fusion. Not being rolled into a hunk of 1959 Detroit steel.

My [car fanatic] grandpa is rolling in his grave right now.

My dad would also be pissed if he saw this video. That pinball wizard musical where they destroy all the old pinball machines (I haven't seen it since I was a kid), I remember my dad just tweaking a shit at that part.

This is difficult to watch. I appreciate what the IIHS has done for us but I can't stand to see classic cars like this more or less senselessly smashed. If I were there I'd need to leave the room.

The fuzzy dice was a nice touch.

That was really neat. I was just thinking to myself this morning in my car: "why the hell does this thing have like 8 airbags...I have a nice seatbelt, those airbags are just a waste of money"...then you watch the older car and see where the dummy's face was reamed by the steering column.

@reservoir_dog: Yeah, I'm sad, too. You're not alone. I yelped when they destroyed a 100+ year old shot gun on MythBusters. On the other hand, it was educational, I suppose.

There's been extensive discussions on this across the web on various boards. Almost all of them lambasting the choices of vehicles, mainly the Bel Air.

Here's one such example:
First; seatbelts were available back then as a Dealer Option - my 61 Corvair came with a set of very stiff aircraft belts and a lever-lock style buckle, though I long ago changed them to a modern design with a pushbutton latch. Problem being that the common thinking was still "Safety Doesn't Sell", so you had to get them installed.

Second; the clouds of rust dust lead me to believe there's a reason that 'perfectly good' BelAir was sacrificed to the metal masher. That car is worth some serious bucks if it was in nice condition, ipso facto they got hold of a 'survivor' grade car that might have been complete and a passable looker, but wasn't worth restoring.

Third; if the BelAir had the 235CID straight six, you could hold a picnic under the hood with the engine as the table - huge compartment, skinny engine. A frontal offset collision would easily have missed the engine block.

Fourth; the BelAir was structurally compromised by the body designers, with that funny swoopy looking fold-back curve in the A-pillar. And a lot of other things that they thought looked cool, but didn't add structural integrity. The ONLY thing the BelAir had an advantage in was sheer mass, and even then they were starting to pare that excess metal away to start toward decent fuel mileage.

It was sickening - but even with all the problems it's not anywhere NEAR as bad as what the Smart Car did in it's frontal offset crash test - it bounced off a mid-size Mercedes and got thrown backwards almost as fast as it was gong forward. Just the whiplash from that...

E=MC2 - Unless we have separate divided freeway lanes for sub-compacts like Smart Cars and Mini-Coopers, another one for mid-size to full-size cars and Mommy-Vans, one for Pickups and Vans and Escalades and Navigators, and a fourth for Semis, mis-matched collisions will kill.

I don't want to be in an accident like that either way. Yikes!

@Moosehawk: You're thinking of the rock opera Tommy. The scene is where he is getting folks to go through some of the crap he did, except the folks rebel because while his intention was pure, the folks around him turned it into a money making machine and people get fed up.

@Saboth: Not just that, I don't think the Bel Air had a seatbelt for the driver, and if it did, it was just a lap belt.

@theblackdog_GoesPrivate: Yes! Thank you. I knew I had it wrong.

@bbagdan: No one does!

I think that driver training and safe driving is the absolute best thing for drivers.

Accidents will happen, and I'm glad that cars are safer now. But most accidents can be avoided by safe driving - going the speed limit, obeying traffic laws, paying attention while driving.

Dumbasses, you don't take a classic car like that and fucking destroy it.

Where is the engine in the 59 Malibu and is the rust coming out of the car at around 1 minute 5 seconds indicative of a weakened body?

@Blueskylaw:

Sorry, 59 Bel Air.

Edit button please.

@Nighthawke: Fun factoid- In China, freeway lanes are, in fact, divided in such a way. After seeing the crash test of the Brilliance BS6 the reason will become very obvious.

Uh, the crash test video player is missing a couple of models. Where's the Nissan Skyline?

@dashjdot: You mean aside from cat videos, right?

@Nighthawke: I think you would be better served using the formula for kinetic energy: KE = 1/2(mass)x(velocity)^2. Unless you really want to calculate the intrinsic thermo-nuclear energy difference between a 1959 and 2009 Chevy, that would be interesting to see.

@jamar0303: There are clips on YT of various Chinese vehicles that have tried for import licenses. Talk about poor designs! Their offset impact tests make this one look like a walk in the park.

@Vandelay Import Export: Though they are a deadly projectile at 40mph.

@Nighthawke: @jamar0303: It is also missing some videos. The new rollover videos appear to be missing. My vehicle got a top rating in that category. However, not all vehicles have been tested in that category yet.

@Nighthawke: Yeah that really is an excessive amount of rust. If it had been completely restored or maintained, as the spots came up they would've been sanded and sealed/primed as opposed to letting whole pieces rot. That is a ridiculous amount of rust to come off a car that is supposed to be in the same condition today as it was in 1959.

@rpm773: I agree. And Elroy Jetson should be driving/piloting it.

@Nighthawke:

Re: the Smart--no, the Smart did much, much better: the Bel Air's steering column intrusion alone would cause an HIC well into the > .9 fatal range.

@Nighthawke: From what I have read, the IIHS responded to the "Clouds of rust" claim. They say it is dirt that is terribly difficult to get out of all the nooks and crannies, but when it crashes, all that dirt became dislodged. I'm sure some of it was rust, but the general claim here is that the car was more or less structurally sound.

Well I used to like classic cars until I entered the automotive engineering world. They're nice to look at but they are, in a short answer, death traps. Had James Dean been driving a 2009 Malibu today (back in 1959), he would probably (very highly) not died. By the way, today it is not legal to drive off a car lot with a street-legal racing car so that makes a difference too. I remember a guy driving his late sixties Mustang around Grand Rapids, MI and he rolled it. He wasn't going fast and I remember it was about 45 mph. He's dead, done, nadda. These cars are just not safe. I remember learning that up until the early 60s some model cars still had plate glass in the front and back window's. Plate glass!?!?!?! Do you even know what the stuff does to your face? Your cut up face would make the Joker look good. Even freakier was a Ford Model "A" that I stopped to look at in Lansing, MI years ago. You think the Bel Air was unsafe? Geeessssh, the Model A had plate glass windows (all around), a box seat in the back, "theatre-style" seating in the front (all seats sans seatbelts), and about 80% of the actual inside of the vehicle area as "one big empty can", to be tossed around in, just in case you "roll the thing". Ohhh and I should not forget to mention that the dashboard was a solid-rock piece of fine hardwood that any nice, human skull would just love to kiss on a "dark and stormy night". I wouldn't drive a Model A today unless I saw my attorney and made out a Will. I'll keep my Ford Focus.

@GuinevereRucker: And less driver distraction. A friend of mine was in almost exactly the accident pictured; luckily, both cars were going a bit slower (35-40 mph). OTOH, neither had airbags. The other driver slid into my friend's lane while tending to his cellphone or radio. This was on a residential road w no divider.

My friend - one of the best drivers I know - managed to scoot towards the shoulder a bit and avoided a full head-on collision; his pregnant wife in the passenger seat was relatively uninjured (though she went into slightly early labor). My friend ended up breaking his pelvis in a few places, broke a rib or two, and had a giant seat belt bruise. Nasty accident that could have been a lot worse with just a few more mph or poorer driver reflexes. And it could have been completely, completely prevented.

@Nighthawke: The Smart Car received a 5-Star rating on the same type of frontal impact. I call it the "James Dean" crash, because that is the exact front-end (corner to corner) crash in which he died of.

@Nighthawke: At the 2008 autoshow in Detroit, the Chinese vehicles had a whole room and I got a look at them. The vehicle skins are amazingly cheap and thin. The gas plate lid covering the gas cap actually "flexed" as I opened it. They looked kind of nice but seemed very cheap. The Chinese are years behind American automotive manufacturing and quality IMO because of this show.

@theblackdog_GoesPrivate: Yeah and back in those days with only the lap belt, the paramedics would pull two bodies out of a car even though it was only a one-driver accident: your upper torsal and lower torsal, because the driver was split in two during an accident. When I was a kid in the early 70s, I remember stories such as this all the time.

@OMG! SP00N:
Watching that bel Air die makes me shed a tear.

But Dear god, I'm really going to rethink about the Classics-
Fun to look at, Potentially deadly to drive.

What a waste of such a beautiful classic.

@Saboth: Another thing. Look how the windshield shattered and flew out of the car in the Bel Air. The Malibu, it stayed in place and cracked. There was no glass flying all over the car.

@Colonel Jack O'Neill:
werd.

@LeChiffre:
If James Dean had been driving a Malibu, well, he really wouldn't be James Dean, then--he'd be Lou from Accounting.

If only they would make cars that looked like old cars on the outside with the safety of today's cars on the inside. I want an old school VW bug that won't crumple like a tin can when it gets hit. The new ones look like ipod accessories and aren't nearly as cool.

@LeChiffre: Years behind in the quality but because they are so cheap would more people buy them? I'm thinking a specific demographic like an impoverished nation who wants cheap cars and doesn't care about safety or reliability.

@korybing: A old school VW bug that wouldn't roll over in a cross-wind - yeah, I'd drive that.

@pecan 3.14159265: Wait...there's something besides cats on youtube?

Can we use either of these cars as trade-ins under the clunker program? Might as well get some benefit.

FWIW, my '57 Ford Fairlane had airplane style seatbelts because we installed them to the frame.

Anyone know the comparative weights of these cars?

@mackjaz:

Acording to this:

[www.examiner.com]

the Bel Air weighs 3,615 lbs, while the Malibu weighs 3,436.

My '57 Chevy is grateful IIHS didn't get their acts together two years sooner.

@Slave For Turtles: I would say that this is educational too. I feel it really proves to people the leaps and bounds the auto industry has made in making cars safer.