Crash test: '59 Chevy vs. '09 Chevy - The good old days, it turns out, weren't so good. An insurance research group pits some Detroit iron in a head-to-head test.

The Chevrolet Bel Air was the Toyota Camry of its time -- affordable, stylish and roomy -- and the best-selling car in America in 1959.

It was 17 1/2 feet long, nearly 7 feet wide and weighed more than 3,600 pounds. Mileage? Gas was 25 cents a gallon, and even if the Environmental Protection Agency had been invented, no one would have cared.

The 2009 Chevrolet Malibu, by comparison, is a tidy 16 feet long and nearly a foot narrower. Its 2.4-liter, four-cylinder engine gets 26 mpg highway/city combined, and it exhausts cleaner air than most baby boomers ever inhaled.

The video to the right shows what happens when past and present collide under controlled conditions.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an insurer-supported research group, brought the two together to demonstrate in dramatic fashion the improvements in car safety since its 1959 founding. The offset collision test pits two vehicles at 40 mph.

The driver in the Bel Air, its engineers concluded, would be in sorry shape. The car lacked seat belts, let alone air bags, allowing the driver to strike the unforgiving steering column, unpadded dashboard and roof.

highway safety then and now

The passenger compartment collapsed, crushing the crash dummy's legs. The seat was torn from the floor. The windshield popped out and the doors opened, possibly allowing the driver to be ejected.

On the other hand, the driver of the Malibu might have sustained an injury to his left foot, analysis of test data showed, but otherwise emerged unscathed.

Contrary to Internet suspicions, the IIHS assures us that the antique Chevy wasn't a ringer: There is indeed an engine in the car, and the red cloud of dust that shows during the slow-motion replays isn't rust, merely 50 years of road grime.

What changed in a half-century? The insurance institute cites the crush protection engineered into new cars, dissipating the energy in a controlled manner so that seat belts and air bags have time to do their jobs. (See MSN Autos' take on the 10 most significant safety features.)

View the videos in the gallery to see other recent crash tests.

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Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:19:48 PM
The X frame uni body design was horrible. I could have told you what would happen without the destruction of the 59. Consider the source. What are they going to show you, 50 years of failure. No. Try it again with a full frame vehicle. This demonstration is a sham.
Friday, October 16, 2009 11:59:39 AM
I am an engineer and I don't think the test was fair.  The place where the new car hit the 59 Chevy is an area that is nothing but fender and fender well; mostly sheet metal.  The 59 Chevy must have had a 6-cyl engine.  You could have had a 348 c. i. big block engine in there (same basic block as the 409) and have the little car hit the middle of the 59 Chevy.  And while you're at it you could have had a 59 Chevy 9 passenger wagon.  That and a 348 is well over 4000 pounds.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 1:12:59 PM
The bel air is using less than about 40 percent of it's front end and the malibu is using a tad over 50 percent of it's front end to absorb the impact (check out the overhead shots).  And the '59 may have two more disadvantages in this particular test: it may have an inline 6 engine instead of the wider v8 and this model probably has an x frame rather than the stronger ladder frame like for example a '57 would have had.  Seatbelts would have been added later to this car by the mid 60's.  (Didn't some state inspections require them eventually)?  It is true that advances have been made but that old iron is tougher than that test shows.  They could have put in some front seat belts at least in the older car and evened up the front ends better.  However, please don't destroy another antique to tweak the test.  v/r,   
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 6:19:45 PM
DUUUUUHHHHH!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 1:23:18 PM

The point here is that sure the bel air has completely diff styling and safety features, but they have come a long way. I ve worked on cars at my dads shop and well the 2 are in completely diff worlds.

 

The belair has a steel reinforced frame with certain weak points like most cars.

 

Most new cars have the fiberglass bumpers or eurethane but behind those is a hardened foam "pad", and behind that is steel reinforcement. The pad acts like a spring when theres impact taking most damage. If youve seen at raceways or tracks some have huge foam wall gaurds. Point is that newer cars have some good new features/ But they did pick the wrong car and did set it up the wrong way.

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Published Sept. 17, 2009

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