Who knew? They had a development program in the 70's that created super safe cars. And they weren't bad looking, either. I remember the safest car I ever saw was the black Checker that Leonard Woodcock had as his ambassadorial vehicle in China. Weighed as much as any armoured vehicle on the road. That was one cool ride, tho.
Too bad the .gov had all these destroyed, they were way ahead of their time.
via Jalopnik
Too bad the .gov had all these destroyed, they were way ahead of their time.
via Jalopnik
More +pics and video at the source.Thirty-five years ago, the U.S. government built a fleet of cars that were safer than anything on the road. Twenty-five years ago, the government shredded them in secret. Two escaped the crusher. This is their story. As Congress and the auto industry wrestle with another round of tougher safety standards, nothing on the menu comes close to setting up the federal government's own vehicle design business. Yet that's exactly what Congress did in 1966.
With the furor from Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed still fresh, the original act creating the Department of Transportation also ordered it to build its own experimental vehicles for testing new safety devices, and swap notes with 13 other countries. The young faces at the new agency farmed out the first set to three companies, including General Motors.
The result: Three swamp-monster sedans of more than 5000 pounds apiece that did double-duty as safe transportation and appetite suppressants. The October 1972 issue of Popular Mechanics laid out the details: Roof-mounted periscopes; bumpers wide enough to haul Dom Deluise; and in the GM model, a rear-seat "credenza," so back-seat passengers would be protected in crashes by smacking into a vinyl-covered bosom.
Unsatisfied with the vault-on-wheels solution, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration changed course. It held a bake-off in 1975 for what a safe car in 1985 might look like. Ford and Volkswagen offered ideas, but NHTSA awarded what would become a $30 million contract to two independent engineering firms, Calspan and Minicars.
While Calspan modified French-built Simcas donated by Chrysler, Minicars designed a new model from scratch, aiming to build a four-passenger small car that could protect all its occupants in a 50-mph crash from either the front or side while burning as little fuel as possible. The result looked like an AMC Pacer worked over by the set designers of Battlestar Galactica.
For a piece of American-built iron from the depths of the Carter administration, the 14 Minicar Research Safety Vehicles had a massive amount of technology. The fender and front fascia were plastic composites that could take a 10-mph smack unscathed. Under the plastic body of the most advanced version were run-flat tires, anti-lock brakes with crash-sensing radar and dual-stage airbags. The front seats were attached to the roof with a see-through plastic shield, so they wouldn't collapse in a rear-end collision.
Power came via four-cylinder engines pilfered from 1977 Honda Accords, mounted in a mid-rear layout driving the back wheels through a 5-speed automated manual transmission. Test drives scored about 32 miles to the gallon, but test crashes suggested passengers might walk away from most crashes up to 50 mph with minimal injuries. NHTSA officials claimed thousands of lives a year could be saved if Minicar tech became standard.
And of course it had gullwing doors. Don Friedman, who managed the project for Minicars, said the idea was simply to look as stylish as the concept being cast around the same time by John DeLorean.
