Monday 4th March 2002

Safe Saab

US findings show Saabs are the car to crash

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[stevenrt]

saabs were pretty innovative in their time, but they made two mistakes:
1) while fwd was innovative initially - they were 20 years ahead of the game - when the rest of the automotive world moved to fwd Saab should have gone to awd. This would have given them the differentiation that Subaru enjoys now and would have avoided the torque steer problems of their hi po cars
2) they were bought by GM, the ultimate crappy car maker. they can't help but be crappified now

[Roadrunner]

On the safety issue I read somewhere that you are 17 times more likely to die in a crash if you have a collision in a light weight car with a heavy well built car. The thousands of accident statistics support this. An example given to illustrate this was a roller hit a eurobox at 30mph. Result: roller - bumper scratch, eurobox - write off and the woman died.

Makes you think about cars built as light as possible to gain speed - tvr and elise.

[kevinday]

Agreed heavy = safer, but all modern TVRs weigh over a ton, somewhere between 1050 and 1200kg, comparible with about 700-850kg for a 'supermini' such as a Daewoo Matiz. Elise is another thing though!

[PetrolTed]

quote:Makes you think about cars built as light as possible to gain speed - tvr and elise.

Makes me more mad that the stakes are being raised by the manufacturers who are producing all these stupid SUVs. The days of the normal 'saloon' car are numbered. We'll all be driving around in armoured personnel carriers soon.