One I smashed earlier

driven

driven

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Found this in my old 35mm slide collection
Smashed my R8 Big Block 1108.
Pretty well demolished the front. Superb crumple zone.
Could still open front door, drivable and steerable, but view was restricted a bit :)
Love those rear wheel drives. Wrecked my Esky in the front though
r8.jpg
 
In my childhood I have seen a similar incident when someone wrapped the front of a R8 around a pole and put a nice perfectly round dent in the entire front. Doors, etc, still worked as if nothing had happened.
 
driven said:
Found this in my old 35mm slide collection
Smashed my R8 Big Block 1108.
Pretty well demolished the front. Superb crumple zone.
Could still open front door, drivable and steerable, but view was restricted a bit :)
Love those rear wheel drives. Wrecked my Esky in the front though
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You carried an esky? One of the great tricks of a RER was to remove the "boot" drain plug, line with hessian sacks and half fill with ice. Mobile esky! Great for long weekend camping trips.
Sadly my friend borrowed my R8 one weekend and met a Mini coming opposite way. Similar extent of damage but the Mini left a tyre mark on the roof just above the windscreen!
No injury except a gashed shin on the bonnet release.
 
My son T-boned an EA Falcon after missing a Stop sign a few years back.
Only injuries were some bruising from seat belts for him and his mate.
His wallet also got injured from fine for missing the Stop sign.

R15 Wreck.JPG
 
Just found out how to easily fix all these front end smashes
Just attach an air hose
 

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Minor bingles like these you’d be fine in pretty much anything. But the R8/10 and the 12/17/fuego/25 designs both had some very nasty designs flaws when it came to crash safety.

On the 8/10 it’s simply the steering rack out in front of the axle and a solid steel spear I mean steering column. A serious hit and you’re getting the column shoved back through your chest.

On the others, it’s again a steering wheel intrusion issue, and a lack of dash stability. There is an r25 crash test video on YouTube, it ain’t pretty. The problem is where the rack is, right behind the engine block. As soon as the engine comes backwards, it collects the rack on its way through and despite the rack being far back, it’s shoving the column back into the driver quite early on in the crumple process.

It was only in the 2000s with the Laguna 2 and Megane 2 that Renault could claim to make safe cars with a straight face..
 
As regards safety of old Renaults, one of the reasons that steered me back into Renault ownership was when my son became of age in respect to getting his Licence.
We'd had previous Renaults; at days old, both our children came home from hospital in an R12 wagon that served us well for many years, and they were later ferried around in a Fuego.
A work colleague had a big bingle in an R16 that virtually took the front off the car but they walked away. So I got an R16 for my son to learn in and then drive. Of course he didn't like it but the R15 appealed far more.
When he had the accident he hit the EA Falcon at about 40km/h and pushed it across the road.
The left front of the R15 was shortened to about half its length but the cabin remained intact and both doors opened easily. I'm not sure a Gemini, Corolla, Datsun of similar vintage would have served as well.
 
Most cars back in those days were death traps, very few were built with any serious thoughts of survivability.

Some exceptions way back in the day are things like P6 Rovers and big Mercedes that thought about fuel tank locations and steering column intrusion and properly engineering cabin strength with actual crumple zones. The R8 and R17 were not safe cars. If you guys got lucky in crashing one, well done you and I hope you bought a lotto ticket :)

 
My wife is a smart driver - when she saw the car in front indicate left and then move to the right lane, she immediately thought "this idiot is getting himself a nice big swing for a turn the wrong way into a one way street". So she hit the brakes, or she would have t-boned the said idiot. The tailgating fool behind her did the same thing, but did not have a hope in Hell of stopping. Our lovely Trak Yellow 16TS was then hit "substantially" in the Khyber by a Hilux towing a 4 wheel trailer, upon which sat a HUGE generator. The culprit than drove straight into a business as if nothing at all had happened.

The missus ended up with a huge bruise between her bristols and whiplash. The 16 was shortened by about two feet and the impact was so great the dashboard was ripped out. I drove the car home and stripped it for parts. The perp was booked for a long list of offences, including Driving while Disqualified...the Hilux driver was booked for Following too Closely.

BP
 
The Rover P6 was an innovative engineers' car, with only a light hand from the boy-stylists to spoil good design. It was in many ways as advanced as the DS, but alas the Leyland take-over left its thoughtfulness marooned. The body was a safe cocoon with all the outer panels and crush areas bolted on. Even Land Rover from years before had a stubby steering column with the box mounted at the bulkhead.
Rover 2000 3.jpg
 
I went the other way. Here's a photo of my 1st R8 I bought smashed for $50 and repaired it.
It had a 1.4 motor and a set of fat wheels. Great fun little toy.
Pity someone offered me money for it.
 

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Haakon said:
Most cars back in those days were death traps, very few were built with any serious thoughts of survivability.
The R8 and R17 were not safe cars. If you guys got lucky in crashing one, well done you and I hope you bought a lotto ticket :)
Click to expand...
One I smashed later, I was stationary at the time, drove home no problems
r17.jpg
 
I came across this Texas accident in my travels. The car is a Kaiser. The caption reads "appears totaled".
Nah, I'm pretty sure it'll buff out.🤦‍♂️

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After reading this thread I was a bit worried about how my Austin A30 would perform in a crash, especially without seat belts.
I found this photo to put my my mind at ease.
It looks like Austin cleverly designed the steering column to go upwards and eject forwards out the windscreen.🤔

20231116_173527.jpg
 
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