Old Chevrolet vs New Chevrolet, Who Wins?

Behold, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's celebration of their fiftieth anniversary.

They decided to demonstrate, visually, just how far car safety has come since 1959.

So, naturally, they smacked a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan into a brand new 2009 Chevrolet Malibu.

That, in my mind, is rather like throwing a typewriter and a computer off a building to see which one will work after the drop.

Neither one of course. And you just destroyed an antique, you twit.

I'll digress so that you can watch the video. In a nice show of symmetry they simulated a 50mph offset head on crash. Only the first few seconds have sound, but it's still strangely satisfying.




Now that you're done with that, I'm assuming you watched it, I'll sum a few things up.

The driver in the silver car almost walked away, only suffering "slight knee injury."

The driver of the brown car "died instantly."

Why? The steering column (what the wheel is attached too) wasn't of the collapsible variety and airbags were about fifteen years or so away. So, when the cars struck, a massive, solid metal, horn button rushed up to the man's head.

That would be like having a steel baseball hitting your head at 50mph.

Of course, the old car fanatics are quite pissed that the IIHS decided to ruin a classic car. I'm a bit miffed myself, if only because my theory of old cars being safer now has a large, Malibu sized, dent in it.

All the same, the IIHS need to test a Lamborghini next. Why? Because it's a very fast car and it might get them away from the mob of gear-heads out for their blood. So for the threatened scientists, overdrive is necessary.