Green-ness and safety of old three box saloon cars.

There was a recentTV car prog 5th gear, iirc) who conducted a head on collision test using a fairly old Volvo estate & a brand new Renault people carrier (Scenic?).
The results were horrific, if you have an old Volvo.
The front cabin in the Volvo was fatal. The dash/steering wheel & footwell had been forced right back, the drivers door was wedged shut, etc. Conclusion was that front seat occupiers of the Volvo would be dead, or at best critical chest injuries, & leg amputation.
The Renault? Driver door still opened, much less egress into the drivers footwell area, & in comparison, the driver would have suffered possible airbag burns, & maybe at worst a broken ankle.
It really was an eye opener. I would have thought the old school "Volvo built solid like a tank, whilst Renaults are tinny & weak" would have been proved, but advances in crumple zones, energy absorption etc won the day by a million miles.
The show must be around somewhere, on 5th gear archive, or youtube, I would have thought.
Matt.

Having needed them in earnest , I would never have a car now without airbags. They really saved us from some nasty injuries.

Ian

Matt,

I remember the programme. It was, scarily, only a Renault Modus. When I see one of these little things on the road now I almost get flashbacks to that 5th Gear crash!
I'm a firm believer in primary safety in a car: good handling, brakes etc. These systems need a firm anchorage to work properly, so to me a 20 or 30 year old bodyshell isn't going to provide its best anymore. Then the secondary safety comes into play: strong 'shell, airbags, good crumple zone etc. An old bodyshell, outdated safety features, old style brakes, skinny tyres....
Fine in its day, but a 240 is so far behind now, I wouldn't be shocked if a VW Fox would go straight through one.
While working in Saudi I saw the aftermath of quite a few collisions involving large American cars built in the late '70s and early '80s. Quite often the welded seams of the 'shell would let go in a crash, providing the occupants with almost zero protection. Thankfully I've never seen anything like it in the UK.

Tony

Things certainly have advanced and a 30-y-o body and frame can't be expected to perform as new given vibration, corrosion, repairs, etc.
And if it weren't for Volvo and Mercedes-Benz etc. building safe cars and promoting it heavily the state of safety would be the less for it now.
As for the "green" side of it, I wonder if it is indeed better in the long run to keep something like that running rather than to pile it in the heap of decaying autos. I know much of it gets recycled, but that process costs energy and resources as well.
Certainly it will be more economical to keep it running for some period.
David

Sometime around 10 years or so ago it was stated that on average cars produce three time the pollution during manufacture compared to during use. No doubt that figure has changed, but with the current low emissions from new cars I think it's time other factors in transport were looked at more closely, for example shipping and airliners/cargo planes.

Tony

Yep it was a dinky Modus against a 7 series. The Volvo was ripped to pieces and the occupants would probably be dead. The Renault passengers would have probably walked away.

Found it! Good ol' YouTube!

This is very interesting. I agree about the narrow tyres! Good for traction in the snow though, but less so in the wet. I slow down in the wet. When I replaced the tyres after buying the car I opted for the even narrower option of tyres for fuel economy, knowing the lesser handling except in the snow. I am no speed merchant. But the brakes are superbly engineered. It is very hard to lock a wheel, let alone manage a complete skid, but the stopping distances are still competitive. Another car that had very well engineereed brakes was the P6 Rover 2000...

As for corrosion and vibration and general wear in the engine, with my 18 year old I can report that its fuel economy is just as it was seven years ago [quite possible to get over 40 mpg with anticipatory driving, and minimising the use of the brake], it burns no oil, and has absolutely no corrosion in ythe body. As for vibration, I have had people in the car wonder if the engine had stopped at the traffic lights... At 70 mph the engine makes a low hum that is less than heating fan were it running. The car has only just turned 125,000 miles which is perhaps half worn. The model was built to last.

As for crumple zones, clearly this was not on the agenda! Neither are such wonders as soft plastics in the cabin, so an injury from the frame which runs both along the sills and over the doors is quite conceivable.

What remains a fact is that certain models such as the 240, the Moriis Minor and some others, had a structural integrity that was so far in advance of their time that they still remain relatively safe vehicles today, if not the last word. I personally would not trust a small front wheel drive to be safer, and death stats in Sweden over the last forty years seem to bear this out, though I cannot find the sources for this. Maybe JohanR will comment on that aspect if he see this.

On green-ness, the fuel costs of making a car are massive and replacing a clean functional one before it is worn out would be daft unless the fuel economy were perhaps doubled in the replacement. I have a suspiscion that my 240 may well be running cleanly in another 18 years! It may even start to appreciate in value fairly soon! The greater saving can be made by cutting out usage where it is easily avoided. I would never start the car for a short journey of say less than four miles round trip. I walk to work whoich is five miles round trip...

If I won the Lottery I would have it rebuilt at Gothenberg. I would not want a new car at all.

ATB from George

OK, 9 series...

Chaps

I have every sympathy for Georges position.

His Volvo is still a good car so why on earth should he need to renew it. Keeping things long term is the ultimate green action. His volvo is obviously not so accident proof as it does not compare with the latest technology but it is probably safe enough.

The furniture in my house is mostly old, a Georgian Bureau, a Victorian side table and old clocks here and there.

I purchased a solid wood dining suite in 1972 and it is still being used. I admit the seats could do with recovering. Most of the tools in my tool box are those which my late father used and even my motor bike is from 1949.

Personally I have never seen the need to throw away and good luck to George in keeping his volvo.

If nothing else, it is better to drive a car that you think of as one of the family rather than something kept only for a couple of years.

George, I hope that you have many more happy years with the Volvo. I have no problem with older cars, though my own Skoda Octavia diesel is a mere youngster at 7 years old. It gives me 50 mpg overall, uses no oil and it's a size which suits me, so I'll replace it only when I have to.
Ken

Thanks all, and especially to Mick and Ken. Of course for me it is the old car or nothing. I would have to pay more for a wreck of a Nova or Metro than the Volvo could be sold for, and yet if someone asked me to drive to Scotland this evening the Volvo would do it easily and reliably, even as an eighteen year old.

ATB from George

quote:

I personally would not trust a small front wheel drive to be safer, and death stats in Sweden over the last forty years seem to bear this out, though I cannot find the sources for this. Maybe JohanR will comment on that aspect if he see this.

George, I have no reason to doubt the facts of the Top Gear Modus vs 940 crash results. And even though Volvo actually pays my sallary, I would go for the new Renault (if the price where the same)!

Bigger cars are generally better to sit in in a crash, but newer are also better and it seems that a well designed modern car is better than any old one.

When it comes to general road safety Sweden, GB and Holland are the leaders and roughly on the same level. It varies a little depending on how you count it, people killed per number of citizens, per number of cars or per total number of miles travelled. I guess they have all improved at roughly the same level through the years, probably from better cars and that people are whearing seat belts and stuff like that. But, in the last Swedish stats from this year the deaths on the roads has increased for the first time since 1971! Nobody knows why.

But if you like your 240, keep it.

I remember some American stats that said that a Chevrole Corvette was 50 times as dangerous as a Volvo 245. Well, it wasn't the cars as such, of course, it was the drivers of the Corvette that was much more dangerous in their behaviour and caused many more accidents!

JohanR

Lies,Damn lies and statistics.

quote:

Originally posted by BigH47:
Lies,Damn lies and statistics.

As an american chemistry teacher once told me

'figures can't lie but liars can figure'.

quote:

Lies,Damn lies and statistics.

A quote from a politician who knew plenty about lies, but nothing about statistics.

Ken

quote:

Originally posted by JamieWednesday:
Yep it was a dinky Modus against a 7 series. The Volvo was ripped to pieces and the occupants would probably be dead. The Renault passengers would have probably walked away.

If you mean the 5th Gear item on YouTube, this is a nonsense stunt pulled for the purposes of making good TV. It is nonetheless jolly interesting, and reveals quite a lot about how car manufacturing has changed over the intervening years, but any conclusions on relative safety have to be pretty speculative.

Why is this? Because the item showed the Volvo and the Renault crashed into each other in an asymmetric frontal collision, with both at a terminal speed of 40mph. This means that the impact experienced by each vehicle was 80mph, at which speed all the occupants would have died from the effects of deceleration, regardless of how the body shell reacted. For the purposes of informing the public, rather than entertainment, it would have been much more useful to bang both cars into a concrete block at 30-40mph, and compare the results.

I am reminded of Top Gear's stunt where they ran a Smart into a wall, head on, at 70mph. Remarkably, the passenger compartment was virtually untouched, and the driver's door could still be both opened and latched closed afterwards, so strong was the safety cell. To their credit, they made the point that even with this, anybody in the car would have been killed outright from deceleration, so it's pretty academic.

The Volvo was designed & built in an age of manufacturer integrity, where you paid a bit more for something that would last longer, and it has been supremely successful in this -- accordingly a very environmentally-conscious product, on the basis that it will not require replacement so often. The Renault is something which is built to work OK for 3 years, after which the manufacturer will no longer be interested, since their marketing department will have dreamt up something else to dangle in front of the buyer's nose by that time. Apart from rattles, buzzes, squeaks and general "programmed wear", stuff which goes wrong on the Renault after this time will become increasingly major and "not worth repairing", since the manufacturer can control the volume of insurance write-offs by building components to last a very specific period of time, and setting particular prices to encourage replacement rather than repair.

Volvo, historically, were one of the last manufacturers to do it properly, and just build stuff the best they could for the money while keeping it relatively simple. It didn't pay.

Dear Mark,

Thank you for that post, and not simply because it agrees with my gut feeling, but because it is well explained.

Conclusion is that not only will I run my old 240 as long as it remains an economic proposition but get another if I can find one still good enough to take on.

As regards fuel economy, I agree that some vehicles are now doing much better in this regard, but my feeling is that mileage covered is more significant. If I use the car where unavoidable, such as a couple of trips to Norfolk, moving house items about, and so on, my average use will be one trip a week. I do not use her for pottering about to fetch the Sunday paper!


Dear Friends,

Thanks for all the contributions to what has been an informative thread for me. George

quote:

Why is this? Because the item showed the Volvo and the Renault crashed into each other in an asymmetric frontal collision, with both at a terminal speed of 40mph. This means that the impact experienced by each vehicle was 80mph, at which speed all the occupants would have died from the effects of deceleration, regardless of how the body shell reacted. For the purposes of informing the public, rather than entertainment, it would have been much more useful to bang both cars into a concrete block at 30-40mph, and compare the results.

I hate to disapoint you Mark, but two cars crashing into each other front to front, assymetrically, is quite common in everyday traffic. One car going into a stiff, imovable concrete wall is, in fact, rather uncommon.

JohanR

Mark suggested

quote:

Volvo, historically, were one of the last manufacturers to do it properly, and just build stuff the best they could for the money while keeping it relatively simple. It didn't pay.

Hmmm, so then they changed things to something that does pay. Nowadays a more common refrain of the Volvo owner is "ahhhh, Volvo. You're unlikely to die in one; the maintenance costs might kill you, though".

I am learning this through running an 855-T5. It's fun (surprising for what looks a lot like a pipe-and-slippers car), quick and sure-footed, and surprisingly spacious/capacious (especially for carrying stuff - crikey I could carry NBLs in it with ease)... the silly things that go wrong with it, though, are rather a shock after having run many japanese cars, and a number of euros. The solidity of it is rather addictive, though.

Should give them a break, really. It was their first real effort (eg not acquired, designed from scratch) at front drive.

My brother thought he would upgrade to a Volvo [feeling that his elder brother who is not so financially astute as he is!] should not be using a better car than he was. He got a V70 Diesel model, which stayed with him for eighteen months before he chopped for a VW! The car gave endless niggling problems, such as conking out on the M-way with all the family aboard in the middle of the night due to some fuel pump issue that could not be fixed at the road-side, but required the car to go in to a garage having been towed away. It was still in warrantee, but the costs even so were known, and he did not care to take them on once the warrantee ran out!

I daresay that these issues are now addressed with the newer V70s, but the great thing about the older Volvos is that they were definitely mature, completely developed and reliable concepts, well made, and long lasting, without the horrible spectacle inbuilt obsolescence found in all modern cars.

I accept that he is likely to survive a serious accident better in a modern VW than I might in my veteran designed 240, but then he drives much faster than me, and many times the distance, annually! That may even up the chances a bit!

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by JohanR:

quote:

Why is this? Because the item showed the Volvo and the Renault crashed into each other in an asymmetric frontal collision, with both at a terminal speed of 40mph. This means that the impact experienced by each vehicle was 80mph, at which speed all the occupants would have died from the effects of deceleration, regardless of how the body shell reacted. For the purposes of informing the public, rather than entertainment, it would have been much more useful to bang both cars into a concrete block at 30-40mph, and compare the results.

I hate to disapoint you Mark, but two cars crashing into each other front to front, assymetrically, is quite common in everyday traffic. One car going into a stiff, imovable concrete wall is, in fact, rather uncommon.

JohanR

Johan -- sorry, I obviously wasn't clear. What you say is of course correct. However, my point was that an event including an 80mph collision speed is useless for determining relative safety, since you'd die from deceleration -- so any strength advantage a particular car exhibited would be not only pretty irrelevant, but possibly actually misleading. If they'd done the stunt with a collision speed of 40mph, it would have been a lot more useful for the "stated purpose". Not so much fun, of course.

quote:

Originally posted by Rico:
Mark suggested

quote:

Volvo, historically, were one of the last manufacturers to do it properly, and just build stuff the best they could for the money while keeping it relatively simple. It didn't pay.

Hmmm, so then they changed things to something that does pay. Nowadays a more common refrain of the Volvo owner is "ahhhh, Volvo. You're unlikely to die in one; the maintenance costs might kill you, though".

I am learning this through running an 855-T5. It's fun (surprising for what looks a lot like a pipe-and-slippers car), quick and sure-footed, and surprisingly spacious/capacious (especially for carrying stuff - crikey I could carry NBLs in it with ease)... the silly things that go wrong with it, though, are rather a shock after having run many japanese cars, and a number of euros. The solidity of it is rather addictive, though.

Should give them a break, really. It was their first real effort (eg not acquired, designed from scratch) at front drive.

Stonking car, though. There's a particularly nicely riced one here. In the UK, that would be cheap to maintain as bits are easy to come by from scrappers, etc. and no dramatic expertise is required when servicing. I have this on personal recco -- our mutual chum Bob has one (I think it's one of those) -- he says the only downside is fuel consumption. No rust, and it's worth, well, frankly not a lot. But it goes, it's smooth quiet, reliable and fun. And just decadent enough to be interesting!

Ahh, well Bob is a man of impeccable taste.

one of these?



The fuel econ is fine on motorway mile munching, not so great for round-town and suburban work. especially if one gets 'turbo happy' our kids love it, call it the supercar (coined their own phrase), prefer it to the nissan maxima we also run. I think the ovlov offers better visibility for the young'uns. I haven't shown them there's a rearward facing seat!

cheers

Dear Rico,

When my bro and I were kids we used to call our old grey 145 the "ovlov!" If I could have any car I would have the 2.9 litre [non-turbo] straight six S80, though this is now phased out.

My late Norwegian grandfather had a number of cars after the War: First, a Morris Oxford "MO" woody station wagon. This was confiscated and served many years as the town police car, as he imported it without the proper paperwork in 1948 when Norway was very short of foreign exchange. Having the car taken off him once, he got the correct paparework and imported another, which he ran till 1958. Then he got a Mercedes, possibly a 190, which he described as the worst car he ever had. Even slower than the Morris, terrible brakes and would not start in freezing weather.

After a short while he bought a AMC Rambler Classic, of which he had three during the sixties - straight sixes and a V8. My grandmother had three Austin 1100s in the same period, followed by an Audi 60 and then a VW Passat and a Golf.

I asked him why he never bought a Volvo, as he always praised the car. "Too narrow. No bench seat in the front!" My uncle in Oslo had a 760 for a while, which had a non-Volvo engine of V6 configuration, but he broke three engines in two years with localised overheating and cracked cylinder heads. His wife, my aunt, amusingly refered to my 240 as a, "Charmingly style free zone!"

I have never had any doubt of the make's real quality, though reliability did take a dip at the the time the Ford Motor Company took on controling ownership. I hope that Volvo will be sold off by Ford as they are selling Aston Martin and Jaguar. Whether Volvo has a future as a small manufacturer I am not sure, but I remain to be convinced that Ford is the right partner either.

Perhaps a more distant partnership might be good with some company like Honda, which also makes excelent cars.

ATB from George