Saw the new '07 Sebring Thursday

Dubious. The jury's still out about the efficacy of frontal "air
bags" in frontal collisions. All other mandated safety gear on 20
year old Chrysler products had been in place since the
'70s...collapsing steering columns, padded surfaces, blunt control
stalks, and so on. Of course, lap and shoulder belts had been
mandated for some time.

One area where all US cars were weak at that time, especially certain
Chryslers, was in side impact protection. Earlier M-bodies, then
favored in police fleets nationwide, were notorious for side impact
intrusion into the passenger cabin.

 

Side impact beams have been a required feature for a long time, at least
back to the early 1970's. I doubt if they would still be required equipment
all these years if they were not effective. Side air bags are an optional
additional layer of protection in newer cars.

Yes, a vehicle produced today is likely to be safer than one produced 20
years ago, however, the mere fact that a car is 20 years old does not
necessarily make it unsafe.

 

Why NOT do that? My daily driver is a '66 Dodge Polara

Old-fashioned brakes,

Nonsense. His Newport has disk brakes, and my Polara has been converted
to disk brakes (from a '73 Newport, incidentally). My Polara stops as
fast as my wife's 1993 car with ABS does.

Absurd. Side-impact beams became mandatory in the early 70s, as did "5
mph bumpers." Collapsible steering columns and crumple zones date back
to the mid 60s. Plus we have mass on our side.

ROTFL! You really don't know much about older American cars, do you?
Seat belts became mandatory in the 60s, shoulder belts in '68 (optional
prior to that). And not having a bomb aimed at your chest is a *good* thing.

 

Chrysler stopped making ANYTHING with front drums in the early 70s. MOST
of their vehicles had front disks back to around 68/69, some earlier
than that.

 

Not quite, but close. And back then, there was a lot more cabin (and
non-cabin) space to work with, so things could move much further before
causing harm.

Internal cabin design to minimise injury?

Yes, very much so. By federal law, dating back to the mid 60s. Padded
dash, knee bolsters, side-impact beams, collaspible steering
wheels/columns, etc. All date to the mid/late 60s.

 

Hmm... I actually wasn't trying to either pick on the Japanese nor
find the worst car I could for comparison. I just keep hearing Honda
held up as a pinnacle of engineering that they seemed the obvious
comparison.

 

I just got a 'fridge magnet from rockauto.com with a hot looking '66
Polara on it...yours?

"Bad brakes" went away on Chrysler products when they finally dumped
Lockheed brakes in 1957.

Benefits of air bags, except in the fastest frontal crashes, are
dubious, at best. Iacocca was dead set against them for years, not
because he was anti-safety (he was pro-safety, going back to the '56
Ford) but the data showed they were simply ineffective and caused
injury at medium and low speed collisions that wouldn't have happened
with properly worn lap/shoulder belts. What they ARE effective at is
lining the pockets of certain second tier auto industry suppliers.

The move to air bags was due to many states, notably in the South,
which refused, until strongarmed by Washington, to enact mandatory
seat belt laws. California has had one for many years, and the
rightards went berserk over it..."it's my right to drive unsafely,"
blah blah blah, just like the biker bums and their helmets. They were
beaten into submission...like they will be again on Nov. 7. There's
only so much reasoning you can do with a flock of paranoid delusionals
addicted to bad talk shows before you have to just whump them a good
one!

 

From what I have read in NGs and elsewhere there seems an important
difference between US and RoW airbags. In RoW, so I gather, they are
smaller as they are 'only' supplementary to seat belts (hence
SRS --supplementary restraint system -- logo on the cover). For them to be
fully effective seat belts must be worn.

When were inertial-reel seat belts introduced in the US?

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

 

It's the same in the US. "Airbags" are an SRS, and can only be used
with proper lap/shoulder belts in use to be effective.

Early 1970s. Prior to that, they were adjustable belts with
rectractile storage from 1966 on. Prior to that, from the '50s,
optional seat belts had no retractile storage. My dad had optional
seat belts on his '62 Cadillac, but they DID have retractors, as they
did on various Pontiacs I've seen from that era. I have seen 1956
Ford Thunderbirds with factory seat belts as well, probably an option
mandated by Iacocca, who probably back then, was the only believer in
seat belts at Ford. King Henry II was dead set against them, as "they
cost money." Another seat belt believer was John De Lorean, who
promoted their availability in Pontiacs after he got there after
leaving Chrysler circa 1956.

 

Yeah, but the original pitch for airbags was that they were supposed
to protect idiots who didn't use a seatbelt, with the result that they
were powerful enough to stop that idiot from going into the
windshield. At some point between mandating them and them actually
going into production there was a "discovery" that they were
supplemental-only; it was several years before the requirements were
modified to reflect that fact.

 

"Resplendant"??????!! You're letting us all down, Bob! We thought you
were a resplendent beacon of proper grammar and spelling in a sea of
ignorance and stupidity! You'll have to be more fastidious if you want
to maintain your image.

 

Definitely true of EARLY (circa 1993) US airbombs. The later ones are
closer to ROW, but the regulations over here are not quite sane on many
safety devices.

That's 100% true of ALL airbombs- because they don't really do much at
all, the seatbelt is the real safety device.

1974. Up to 1973, shoulder belts were fixed length and had to be cinched
down just like lap belts did. When used correctly, a fixed belt is safer
than inertia-reel type belts, but most people left them loose and floppy
so they could reach the radio controls easily

1974 was also the year of the disastrous seatbelt-starter interlock
fiasco. Both front-seat passengers HAD to be buckled for the car to
start. The system was so trouble-prone and cars would refuse to start
that the law was amended and the systems were allowed to be bypassed
within the first half of the model year! There was an override button
under the hood that gave you 30 seconds to get back in and start the
car, but consumers were NOT pleased with having to use it all the time.

 

TRUE,
long with my "new" 05 sebring convertable I still keep my 89 olds
ciera 210k miles for the weekday work trip, I junked the 86 aries in
05 and got the sebring in it's place

American Cars are the BEST

 

before I got my 89 olds Ciera (which I still use) I had a new 81
Accord, that was my only import and my only P O S. I had to junk it
in 89 due to dealer service could not get the carb to not screw up and
foul the plugs every month or so.

I've bought all my cars new and keep em till they're only suited for
the junk yard

 

Which of the big 3 do you work for?

 

It's not cuz I work for them, I don't work for any of them, I do many
repairs myself, so I keep them in shape and maintenance costs low. The
honda was turned over to the deaaler for repair after following the
"fuel enrichment" service procedure many times, they could do no
better, after 3 times at the dealer and the bills to prove it, the
honda did not last as long as any USA made car I had.

I am an electronic tech type so the computer sensors and such
controls I could deal with for the 89 olds. In reading over the shop
manuals for the 05 Sebring I may be at my limit if I need a new
computer, I'll need a DRB III

 

uh..yeah..sure. That's why the Motor Trend Car of the Year was...you
guess it...a Japanese car yet again... (Toyota Camry).

Now...back AWAY from the crack pipe. Trust me, people function
just fine without drugs....really.

Reality CAN be your friend. Give it a try.

 

Hey if Chevy paid Motor trend off the Vega would still be car of the
year

 

don't *even* get me started on the American cars I've owned (all new
btw, and, if you knew me, would know that I'm religious about
maintenance and washing and waxing).

For example, my brand new 79 Berlinetta Camaro.

The pin stripe running down the middle of the hood was off center by
over THREE INCHES! What the heck was the factory tech doing? Was
he/she drunk?

THEN they painted clear coat over the pin stripe!

Also, the car arrived *out of the factory* with a dead battery.

Then the starter caught fire.

Then the alternator froze up and snapped the belt.

Then the front end had to be realigned SIX TIMES the first year
because it kept eating tires.

The a/c died 2 years later. Compressor prematurely died.

3 years into ownership and the automatic transmission failed.

The paint faded less than 18 months after purchase. The entire rear
spoiler went from gloss black to almost white.

It had a 350 V8 that drank gas like flushing a toilet but had less hp
than my old Fairlady 280Z.

The drivers side window jumped the track and smashed into a million
pieces then burned out the window control switch.

The armrest on the drivers side door broke off in my hand.

The center console was warped.

The t-top leaked like crazy when it rained.

The trunk lid was warped. Not just unaligned. *Warped*. The sheet
metal was all crooked.

The piss poor design of the spark plug wiring melted the plug wires
against the exhaust manifold, shorting out the plug wires and killing
the car, of course, out in the middle of nowhere.

Lemon? Nope..I had two friends that had Camaros...one had a
RallySport (79) and one had a Z28 (80) and they too had a long list of
nightmarish problems with their cars.

Quality control? We don't need no steenkin' quality control!

So I sold it three years after I bought it with a whopping 16,000
miles on the odometer. I just couldn't take the pain anymore.

Then in 2000, I bought a Dodge Durango.

Three months into owning the truck, there was a downpour.

Hey downpour = turn on the wipers right?

Uh..wrong...turning on the wipers OPENED ALL THE WINDOWS INCLUDING
THE SUNROOF!

The ONLY way I could get the windows back up was to pull over and
turn the truck off and back on..THEN the windows came back up and
the wipers turned on. Dealer could never find anything wrong..how
come THAT didn't surprise me?

Then the paint started to chip..and chip and chip and chip. What did
they paint the truck with? Watercolor?

The rear a/c was about as worthless as...well you get the idea.

Oh, and did I tell you that it got 9mpg?

And then the ABS light went off..ended up being an ABS CAB module.
$900 to replace. 100 MILES OUT OF WARRANTY. Dodge dealer didn't want
to pay for it..recommended I call corporate. So I did. Ok, it's out
of warranty, I'm not going to make a big production out of it but I
thought it was worth asking if they were willing to work with me.

Conversation went like this:

"Sir, did you buy an extended warranty?"

"Well, no I didn't but..."

"Well SIR, I guess you will NEXT time won't you?"

<click>

"Hello? Hello?"

The bitch hung up on me!!!

So..we bought a couple of brand spanky new Saturns....

and the nightmare continued. Wind noise, faulty transmission,
windshield leaks, a $600 thermostat repair because some moron
designed the engine that placed the t-stat *inside* the engine block
so the entire top of the engine had to be removed to replace a $12
t-stat.

Unbelievable.


After that, we lost complete and utter faith in any American (big
three) cars and went to Japanese cars. We have three Lexuses and
a Sentra. ALL of them have been absolutely bulletproof and drive and
look like new. The GS300 has 225,000 miles on it, the ES300 has
85,000 miles and the LS430 has 60,000. The Sentra just clicked over
100,000 miles and the ONLY things we've had to do to any of the cars
was routine maintenance and tires. Fit and finish are like brand new
and none of them squeak or rattle.

IMHO, for every American car you say had been driven and "look like
new" at 200,000 miles, I can show you a dozen more of the same model
in the junkyard destined to be remade into soup cans.

American build quality is better than it was in the past but quite
honestly, they still have a VERY long ways to go before they match the
fit, finish and quality of foreign automobiles.

 

Won't bother me.
The Car of the years are always something I'm not interested in.