However, having personally removed and replaced every single nut and bolt on the frame I really have to wonder about the video.
Maybe it's true, but I have to wonder. If you ever watch any NASCAR video clips from way back then you'll notice that most of the cars racing were pretty well right off of the showroom, so to speak. All of the old drivers admit that. If you look at the videos and look at the crashes, you'll see that the cars held up extremely well for the most part. The problem with no 'crumple zones' was that when the cars then didn't 'crumple', the occupants absorbed a more sudden and violent stop of motion. The newer race cars rip apart seemingly easy but the vehicles get progressively stronger as the impact gets closer to the driver. Much of what has been learned safety wise for our vehicles has been from studying crashes and racing provides a lot of crashes to study. Our current vehicles do well with similar crumple zones, giving away body damage to dissipate energy before getting to the driver.
Well we can never know for sure, they do want to sell us new vehicles after all, not just parts to keep the old ones going.
But im just wondering if the old NASCARS had roll cages added, i have not seen old footage and it was before my time, but if they had safety cages welded in, that would change everything.
I dug up this pic from google images, and to me it looks like the nascars had bars added to the cabin, so they could have had more bars under the hood or across the inner fenders over the motor, im not sure.
If the crash test was doctored, and me knowing these cars a little, one way would be to remove the inner fenders, which can be unbolted on these chevys, and also remove some of the body to chassis bolts, all these things would make the assembly much less rigid and you cant pick it on the outer.
But ill say again, there is just nothing there on the side of the x-frame, where the body sill panels run, if someone was to run a couple of frame connectors front to rear, on the outside of the chassis, like my last picture above which has side rails, the 58-64 chevy chassis would do much better in a front corner hit.
This is from wikipedia, we can see that GM later added side rails to their chassis.
GM B platform - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
All B-body cars since 1965 have used perimeter frames with side rails, along with the 1961-64 B-body Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles. The 1958-60 Buicks used a ladder-type frame while an X-frame without side rails was used on 1958-60 Pontiacs and 1959-60 Oldsmobiles, 1958-64 Chevrolets and 1961-64 Buicks.
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