Having made his mark with “Unsafe At Any Speed”, the highly influential book that instigated the government’s safety regulations, Ralph Nader took on a number of other consumer-related subjects. “Unsafe” included a chapter on the Corvair, but somewhat surprisingly, gave the rear engine, swing axle VW little attention. That was just temporary, as in 1971, Nader’s Organization unleashed a scathing report on the Volkswagen, referring to numerous statistics and reports. But this time, someone took him to task, and rather effectively at that.
Road & Track did a quite thorough analysis of the report’s sources, methods and conclusions, and from a reading of it, one is left wondering just how much of a hit job Nader was. There’s a rather astonishing number of omissions, misrepresentations and erroneous conclusions. Why? Nader was an attorney, and this report comes off as a litigation, which is not the same as a truly objective report. And which in the courts of law, would be expected to be counter-litigated. And this is just that. The summation clearly exonerates the Beetle; it was no less safe than other compact cars, most of which were much more recent designs. And this is despite the fact that Beetle owners tended to be younger than average.
It’s a bit lengthy and old history, but I found it interesting enough to keep me at it to the end. And shaking my head a few times…
“Ralph Nader’s attack on the Volkswagen was not unexpected.” True that, and one wonders what took so long, given that the VW had been on the market since 1950 or so, it shared the rear-engine swing axle configuration of the Corvair, it was a very old design, dating back to 1938, and it was of course small. All those factors alone would seem to raise questions as to its safety.
R&T was initially impressed by all of the tests and studies by credible institutions that were used as the primary evidence in Nader’s report. But once R&T started looking at the full reports, they quickly found a pattern where only selected evidence and statistics were used, which created a different picture, sometimes even contradictory, to the one that was painted by Nader’s organization. In essence, that’s the primary issue here, and the conclusions formulated by Nader are therefore questionable, and in some cases highly suspect.
If you’re not going to read the whole thing, there’s a very brief summation at the bottom. At least read that before you comment.
R&T also takes the VW report to task for using overly emotional language, denigrating VW and others with contradictory points of views, and otherwise running rough-shod. It’s quite clear from the get-go that Nader is out to condemn Volkswagen, and has all his guns blazing.
But there are serious omissions and erroneous judgments, like the absurd one that VW parts cost more per pound than that of other cars, hence negating its claim to be an “economy car”. Not only has VW never used that as an argument for its economy, but Nader left out many other cars in the original analysis, which when included show that the VW was in the lowest third in this kind of ranking. Selective omissions and inaccurate conclusions from beginning to end.
Here’s the key summation of R&T’s analysis of all the data:
Not bad, for a car that was designed in 1938 and was commonly owned by a younger demographic.
The seat mounting on my 1963 and 1967 Beetles was a bit weak. Also the gas tank was right out in front just asking to be crushed. I had a 1964 Bus and with your legs out front and weak brakes, you sure didn’t want to be tailgating anyone. But in those days not many cars were safe. Volvo & Mercedes were the only cars touting their safety features.
In the end Nader probably did a good thing making cars safer. Today, safety is something people want in a new car.
I don’t remember whether, or how much, Saab played up their safety features at this time, but they were also very safe.
Rover and Citroen, too
Read the report before you make comments. The seat mounts on ALL cars left room for improvement. Don’t jump on the bug before you look at the facts. Learn to think for yourself instead of relying on communist Nader to keep you “safe”.
Catching fire in a crash wasn’t a problem. Catching fire at other times was a problem. The air-uncooled engine often burned up, and the battery under the back seat often shorted out and burned.
The windshield was definitely a problem compared with other cars of the ’50s and ’60s. If your head went forward in a crash, it would hit the dash in most cars. Some dashes were padded, and even the hard ones wouldn’t cause you to bleed to death.
Yet they still passed all federal safety refs, the ones that Nader campaigned for?. The Beatle lasted another 8 years after this article in the US and died in Mexico in 2003.
By 1974, the Beetle did not pass. Safety and emission regulations only really started circa 1968. Both were phased in. It’s only six years.
At the same time car makers were fighting safety and emission regs in court instead of making their cars safer and cleaner.
Safety regs in Mexico in 2003 were not even close to that if the USA.
The Beetle always causes strong emotions and I guess I am part of that, too. I always thought they were cramped, noisy, slow and dangerous.
However, I met up with a friend’s new man in August, he was was adamant that he wanted the old air-cooled Beetle to resume production. I told him that VW was not going to resurrect a design from 1938 and he was adamant there was a market for it.
I told him to build a factory himself, buy the design from VW and get ready to make at least 250,000, the normally used figure for car profitability.
By 1974, the Beetle did not pass.
The Beetle Cabriolet was sold in the US through MY 1979. And the last beetle sedan was in 1976, and that was the regular Beetle with the flat windshield, not the Super Beetle.
It wasn’t safety regs that killed Beetle sales in the US; the Rabbit had taken its place, and was clearly a much better car. Sales of the Beetle died out.
Wasn’t the last US bound Bug the special edition convertible in 79 ,so it must have been legal then?.
I would suggest you get your facts straight.The standard beetle was sold until MY76 and the convert until MY79. You are entitled to your opinions,but fact are facts. No beetles ever failed any “windshield tests”. There is an old saying about opinions and rectal openings…
Well if you didn’t maintain the car it would do those things you say it did. I drove many aircooled beetles,and I never had any trouble. If you went by the book,they would run for 100k or more. Valve jobs at 50k,but most cars of the 50s and 60s needed needed a valve job at that mileage. My batteries never shorted out because I used the plastic cover the factory put on it. I don’t know what you did with yours.Over-heating was never a problem if you went by the book. Also the heater worked fine if you kept the quarter vent open as the book said you should. You had problems because you thought you knew better than engineers who deisigned the car,and you obviously didn’t. BTW I’m 93 and been driving for over 70 years,so I know a thing or two about cars and how to keep them running.
Even back in the day, it was common knowledge that a VW Beetle was a death trap. Nader may have misrepresented the Bug to some degree, but at least he got the safety issue at the top of consumers’ list.
The cars made in the 1950’s an 1960’s were mostly death traps, too. Nader’s work got us all safer cars.
Nader was heavily advocating airbags in the 1970’s and illustrated that the automakers were opposing regulations, not safety. The claim was saving lives with airbags would cost more than a human life-yes, they calculated the cost of motorists dying vs installing airbags. GM’s excuse on early trials was cost, conveniently leaving out the part that if every car were so fitted, the cost of said airbags would be much less.
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/13/archives/auto-makers-assailed-by-nader-on-air-bags.html
When I was car shopping in 2017-2018, any car that didn’t have a 5 star crash rating was left out of the models I’d consider.
Even back in the day, it was common knowledge that a VW Beetle was a death trap.
Here’s the final summary of R&T’s careful analysis of all the statistics that rebuts that, in the snip attached below:
You are a fool for believing Nader. He was part of the sixties anti-capitalist,pro-communist movement. I’m 93 and I’ve driven for over 70 years and I can tell you that todays cars encourage accidents. People feel invulnerable,and that’s a problem right there. Most of the kiddies on the road today shouldn’t be driving at all. Driving standards should be stricter,but we don’t need “safety” gizzmos. Sorry to have to call you a fool,but in my day we called a spade a spade.
Oh dear . What constitutes ‘safety’ is very subjective. The Beetle was very safe by pre-war standards. By 1955 Citroen were promoting the safety of a car with superb visibility ( un-equalled today) and a single spoke boss-less steering wheel that wouldn’t crush your chest in an accident. Did Nader make things better ? Who knows – his motives where questionable. I always thought air-bags were developed simply because Americans wouldn’t use seatbelts, and I could happily live without the risk they come with. Modern ‘stability control’ means that when you have your accident you will be travelling much faster than before.
Most folk really don’t care about safety. They will happily put dirt cheap Chinese tyres on their nearly-new Audi, or put 3000 lb of wet gravel in an F100 rated at 1200 lbs…..( sorry Paul).
Nader is a very polarising figure (“Good morning, Understatements-R-Us; how may I direct your call?”). He is revered by some for kick-starting auto safety regulations in North America, and reviled by others for spoiling their ability to buy a new 1967-spec Toothgnasher Superflash with no stupid ol’ smelly ol’ dumb ol’ head restraints, shoulder belts, side marker lights, collapsible steering column, etc.
Nader’s actions had both effects. I don’t doubt he was sincerely appalled at the auto industry’s callous, deliberate failure to do any serious safety-related RDC on their own, and he was right about the industry openly prioritising fashion over safety and spuriously dismissing all safety discussions as a matter of careless driving. So I can’t fault Nader for squawking about it when he found/made himself in a position to do so effectively. We are probably better in terms of public health and safety than if Nader or his like hadn’t existed and behaved as he did, when he did.
His machinations also launched Nader’s career as a bigshot. The line is very blurry and porous between his public interest and his self-interest, and many of his activities had a dual purpose of furthering public welfare and furthering Ralph Nader and his fellows. The US vehicle regulatory system was designed and configured as a legally-adversarial one, with lots of opportunity for lots of lawyers. Nader didn’t have direct power to set it up that way, but he positioned himself—abetted and facilitated by GM’s clumsy attempts to smear him—such that the U.S. Congress paid him a great deal of heed.
A whole lot of factors and interests and constraints go into crafting vehicle standards and regulations. Many of them allow a giant range of performance, from inadequate to excellent. The nature and structure of the American system are such that it’s very difficult to upgrade certain categories of safety regulation, and very easy for automakers to derail or indefinitely stall such efforts—all while lawyers rack up billable hours. I think there is a lot of merit to the idea that if automakers put the money and effort into innovating to best meet the intent of the regs that they spend instead on litigating every last punctuation mark in the letter of the law, we’d be better off.
As to the VW (or any other vehicle), “It met all the applicable regulations” does not answer a question of whether the vehicle was safe, only whether it was legal for first sale. I think Road & Track’s scrutiny of the VW compared to its contemporaries was an appropriate, properly-targeted analysis that shines some light on that blurry line between Nader as public advocate and Nader as self-advocate.
A very good summary.
Thanks kindly!
Embrace the advocate; beware the zeolot. My opinion? RN crossed the line. As an attorney, I’m all too familiar with selective citations and the like.to reputable authority and the like.
Kudos to R & T for taking the time and effort to do the hard work needed to counter Nader’s claims. It’s tedious work, and it used to be a part of what was then called journalism. Now, “journalism” consists largely of quoting the subject document, and getting folks riled up about it, on one side or the other, without even attempting to get to the facts.
I’m curious – what was the aftermath of R & T’s pushback? Did RN’s group counter? Was there a public reaction on either side? Obviously, VW survived.
You’ve got a good point there, about journalism. Compare the behaviour of “Dateline: NBC” (Chev/GMC trucks) and “60 Minutes” (Audi 5000).
I would argue you might have cause and effect crossed up, though, with your description of what journalism consists of today. I’d say today’s journalism is primarily about maximising advertising revenue.
Good point too.
RN aside, the VW Beetle and the Model T shared at least one other attribute – they were both manufactured longer than their respective expiration dates. I recall (I think) Paul N. writing about VW’s reluctance to move beyond the Beetle, much like Henry Ford I had to be dragged kicking and screaming by his son Edsel to replace the Tin Lizzie. As an aside, according to “Ford – the Man and the Machine”, ‘ol Henry essentially browbeat Edsel to death.
Fascinating read. It’s also refreshing, in the current era, to see a mainstream publication go to such lengths to carefully refute inaccuracies and downright falsehoods, through careful reference to more complete and factual information.
I agree, but I don’t know that Road & Track were motivated purely by a desire to identify and describe the truth. I imagine they probably wanted to carry on being paid to run VW advertisements, and to carry on receiving first-round invitations to try out VW’s new cars, etc.
Bingo.
That is likely true, still I cannot imagine a magazine today putting the time, effort and energy into such a thorough refuting of the original allegation, and then devoting all that space to it.
Nader was one of the first to go against a large automaker that at that time only worried about being declared a monopoly. He fought to hold manufactures accountable for safety before the government did because they were beholden to lobbyists. Accountability of design. That which one creates is also responsible for. Unfortunately people continue to be injured, disabled or killed until many known design issues are corrected.
I remember when Road & Track’s analysis of Nader’s claims about The safety Of Vokswagen’s automobiles. In my opinion Nader crossed the line between being an advocate and becoming a rather self-serving celebrity. Did Nader ever issue a rebuttal to R & T’s critique of his methods? I don’t recall him ever issuing any kind of statement.
Nader is everything that went wrong with America. Disgusting lawyers making big money out of nothing.
“Big money”? Remember, Nader buys off-the-rack suits and lives in an apartment.
He made big money. He’s just a cheap screw.
I can’t recall if it was R & T or Car and Driver but; they had a series on a guy fighting an unsafe lane change ticket. Right up through appeals Court before giving up. He hadn’t violated the Law and wanted to prove it while being cleared. The Process WAS the punishment as, he spent thousands on Legal Bills.
So…was he…driving a VW? Or did he work for Nader or something? I’m having trouble seeing the relevance.
It was an example of Journalism, not directly related to shilling cars. Just an intimate look at the whole DRIVING experience.
Lawyers=BAD
Nader=Lawyer
Nader=BAD
.
Gee, Daniel. Try and catch up, willya?
Oops! Right! My mistake! Lawyers are terrible, horrible, no-good, and very bad. We should abolish them straightaway, and resolve all of the disputes and suchlike by just asking desmo! 😆
Lawyers are sharks.In my 93 years I’ve never met a decent lawyer.The whole Naderite thing was part of the anti-capitalist,anti-American,pro-Communist movement of the Left. They were also the same people who opposed the Vietnam War. It’s a short hop from Nader to Fonda, and a shorter one from the War Crimes Trials in Stockholm in Dec ’67 to the savage attack against the American auto industry by Nader. The same people today attack 2A, saying it will make America safe. It’s a Big Lie,and I think you know that..
It remains that, in R&T’s own article, that the Beetle rolls more in a accidents than other cars and “leads the field” in single vehicle accidents. It remains that it and the Corvair alone had a steering box forward of the front axle, connected to a rigid column. It remains that the seats came off their mountings/rails in accidents more than other cars (as I read those stats). It remains that the ’30’s-designed car had a screen a couple of inches from the face (as one’s legs are well-forward of that): their assertion that a driver must hit the dash and wheel as well is just that, an assertion. The screen in the Bug can easily be hit by the head without touching either, something unique (an dangerous) arising from the antiquity of the design. Finally, it remains that the swing-axle rear-biased set-up was itself an unsuitable one for mass usage as time marched on. The vast majority of folk don’t know what oversteer is, or what to do with it. They just want to get to their destination.
These things combine to leave a dangerous product for the implied purpose, ordinary, all-weather motoring, and R&T’s analysis of other fudges by Nader cannot change that. I can’t help wondering too if Nader’s response to their questions wasn’t in fact a bit lengthier than what they published. I suspect it was (he was a lawyer, after all!).It’s clear from Unsafe etc that that he respected the role of enthusiasts magazines, and would have taken this approach from them seriously.
All that said, they have certainly caught him with trousers lowered in a number of things that they say he cannot back up, such as the fire risk, the structural integrity issue and the seat collapse issue (which from this piece appears to be a complete fudge by Nader). They have also caught him on possible misrepresentation of statistics, though that is always a vexed area for such allegations – I’d love somebody from CC who has formal knowledge of stats to chime in on this. And it occurs to me that they SHOULD have caught him on the VW van issues by simply asking where his stats on the Dodge A-vans and Econolines were, as they surely had all the same risks.
My two pennythworth is that Nader was an advocate for change that could and should – and reluctantly, slowly, was – made by an exceptionally powerful industry that had no intention of doing so until forced. Literally millions of lives have been saved over the time since, and for that alone, surely some sort of saintly gong awaits him. That he was also a crusader, a promoter of himself and tediously righteous with it fades away in the face of that.
Put it this way. Seems he fudged and plain told some tall tales in the original paper here, and R&T was right enough – albeit with their own slant – to point this out. But history has proved them irrelevant, as there is not a car on sale today that is even 5% as unsafe as ALL the beautiful, stylish polluting death traps that were ’60’s cars.
By 1972, Volkswagen knew that the Beetle’s days were numbered. And everyone knew it was a very outdated design. Its replacement (Golf) was already in the pipeline. Rightfully, that would have happened some years earlier. But this report was essentially 5-10 years too late to have any meaningful impact. What’s the point, essentially after the fact?
I suppose if VW had at the very least said that the Beetle’s replacement was imminent, that might have put this more into perspective.
And although your points are valid, given its age the Beetle came out smelling better than might have been expected. At least better than I might have expected.
Also, the swing axle went away already in 1967, in the US.
The VW’s door locks’ tendency to pop open in an accident was another real issue mentioned in this report, but fixed by then. It happened to me, and I was ejected in an accident as a consequence. I might well have been killed.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/bug-tales-abrupt-change-of-consciousness/
That is incorrect Paul. 1967s were swing axle, as were 68s with manual trans. Only the 68 Auto Stick Shift got IRS; a very small percentage indeed. The manual trans cars had to wait until 69 for IRS. Another thing that was failed to be mentioned was the Beetle got a wider rear track in 67, along with the camber compensatior.
It started to go away, in 1967, since the 1968 Automatic Stick shift arrived in the fall of 1967. But yes, the manual cars had to wait..until the fall of 1968. 🙂
“It remains that it and the Corvair alone had a steering box forward of the front axle, connected to a rigid column.”
A look under the front end of cars such as a Rambler American will confirm otherwise.
Actually, I wondered about that even as I wrote it!
But it’s one thing in the Nader work that’s not challenged by R&T, and I would have thought it is a significant design defect that, if in fact widespread in other cars, they would have jumped on.
My guess – and it’s only that – is that the “forwardness” of the location is very marked in those two, which indeed it is.
As I recall, In a Rambler the steering box is pretty much the first thing that’s going to get hit in a front-end collision, it’s way out in front. I don’t know how widespread this is in other vehicles but AMC used it in their domestic designs (Pacer excepted) until the end. May well have started with Nash. Of course starting in 1967 collapsible steering columns mitigated the problem.
For the most part at that time the general public was not concerned with safety. Many didn’t even want to use seat belts. (In 1956 Ford tried to push safety with what was available at the time and was rewarded with lower sales.)
I’ve driven VW bugs and I’ve driven Detroit barges. One time a young whippersnapper,high on drugs,hit me head on while I was driving a “67 Ford. I wound up trapped by an 800 pound v8 engine. Cut myself out with a K-bar from the Korean fight. Another time I got clobbered while driving a ’61 bug. The ’55 Chevy that hit me was totalled,but my bug shook it off and got me home. You can’t convince me the bug was dangerous,no sir!
Exceptionally well said!
Your thoughts are very similar to mine, but I could not have worded it half as well.
Justy, I also wanted to compliment you on your thoughful comment. I was so engrossed in writing and editing my lengthy comment below that I didn’t notice your post until after I finally submitted mine.
And Paul, you’re correct that the new Golf was in the works and would turn out to be a much safer car in the context of the times. I’ve written about my first-year Rabbit, a fun car that proved to be very unreliable. VW products from the 70s up to the present day tend to perform better than many of their contemporaries in studies of real-world death and serious injury rates.
Daniel Stern’s views on Ralph Nader and auto safety are well stated and very similar to my own, so I won’t add much further. I did read “Unsafe At Any Speed” as a high-schooler and that book had a profound if somewhat serendipitous effect on my eventual career choice.
I never read “Small on Safety” in its entirety, but I do recall the sections on the Beetle’s swing axle rear suspension and on the weakly fastened seat tracks that could lead to occupant ejection through the backlite in rear-end crashes.
I don’t have time to read John Tomerlin’s R&T rebuttal of the latter book, but my recollection of similar reports by him in the 1970s, arguing the case against airbags and the US 55-mph speed limit, showed he had an ability to project an air of scholarship but that his goal IMO was to reach a preordained conclusion.
So, on airbags, he sided with the domestic auto industry that they were an unnecessary and overly expensive substitute for shoulder belts and that the solution was universal front-seat lap/shoulder belt use. Of course, the political will to enact mandatory seat belt use laws was lacking in the US at that time. So we were left with pitiably low seat belt use and no airbags, except for the relative handful of 1974-76 large GM cars that offered front seat airbags as an option (credit GM president Ed Cole).
It wouldn’t be until the mid-80s when Mercedes-Benz broke the logjam by voluntarily installing driver airbags as a SUPPLEMENT to lap/shoulder belt use. At around the same time, New York became the first US state to mandate seat belt use. Toward the end of the decade, Lee Iacocca, superb marketer that he was, did a 180 and embraced the airbag as a selling tool for Chrysler products as an alternative to the unpopular “passive seatbelts” that we being phased in under US regulation by other volume automakers. (Luxury automakers were already following M-B’s lead by introducing airbags with conventional 3-point manual belts.)
With 20/20 hindsight, we now know that the combination of seat belt use with airbag installation has been highly beneficial (notwithstanding the unfortunate defective Takata airbag inflators).
On the 55-mph speed limit, I know I will catch hell from enthusiasts, but the truth is that careful independent research showed that the lower speed limit was a major factor (but not the only factor) in the sharp decline in the fatality rate on US roads after the first oil embargo/price shock. Yes, the 55-mph limit was extremely unpopular (and I didn’t like it myself), but the evidence is clear. Setting speed limits is a political decision, and there is a tradeoff between safety/lives saved and convenience/time saved, no matter how strongly enthusiasts object.
Bottom line, Daniel, is that you are correct that Tomerlin was playing to the automakers (who of course advertised in his magazine) and to his enthusiast audience, although I can’t say that for certain in the case of his Nader vs. VW report.
On the 55-mph speed limit, I know I will catch hell from enthusiasts, but the truth is that careful independent research showed that the lower speed limit was a major factor (but not the only factor) in the sharp decline in the fatality rate on US roads after the first oil embargo/price shock.
It’s not as simple as that. Take a good look at the chart below. yes, there were big drops in 1974-1975 and again in 1981-1983. But there were also dips in the total miles driven. In terms of deaths per billion miles driven (red line), the dips in bot cases were modest, and only a small deviation from the long term decline in deaths per billion miles driven.
And not how total deaths and deaths per million population both bounced back after a couple of years, yet the 55 mile limit stayed around until 1995. Your argument has very limited application.
I’d go out on a limb and say that the two energy crises had a psychological effect on drivers, making them more “sober” and less risk-taking. But in each case that didn’t last.
And why did the same drop occur after the second energy crisis when the speed limit was already 55?
The reality was that lower miles driven, and a temporary change in psychology were the two significant factors. And in the long term, both were just temporary deviations from a long term secular decline.
I did read “Unsafe At Any Speed” as a high-schooler and that book had a profound if somewhat serendipitous effect on my eventual career choice.
Same here for me, too, when I was a high schooler. That book made me more conscious about driving and proactive in maintaining my car. One item in the book that jumped out at me was one of the exposed screws (about a quarter of inch above the surface) on the dashboard. A nurse got in a offset-frontal collision, and her head slammed against the dashboard. That exposed screw scalped her head in a big way. Another one was a woman turning right in her Corvair, and the car rolled over when its rear swing axle buckled up. Her arm was out of the window, and the roof crushed her arm as the car rolled over.
I recalled the “Throw-up Thursdays” at my driver’s school in Dallas where the teacher screened the old film reels of real-life accident sites taking place during the 1950s. All gore and nothing held back. The poor students could barely stomach those films, including a football jock who fainted at the sight of blood gushing out of a victim’s leg. Those film reels made me and others more appreciative of safety equipments and regulations in the 1970s and onward.
Regarding the effects of the 55 mph speed limit – the big drop in the fatality rate happened BEFORE the limit was enacted. The fatality rate actually increased after the limit was enacted (in February 1974).
In October 1973, when the oil embargo began, the fatality rate was 4.4 fatalities per 100 million miles driven. By February 1974, it had dropped to slightly more than 3 fatalities per 100 million miles driven. Over the next nine months, the fatality rate increased, with a slight drop in December 1974. This was with the national 55 mph speed limit in effect.
What most likely happened, in addition to the effect that Paul mentioned, is that the actual gasoline shortages (remember, gasoline was limited in supply – the embargo didn’t just result in a price jump) curbed discretionary driving. People tend to be less careful behind the wheel during the weekend, than they are when driving to work. (No doubt they are also less likely to drink and drive while going to work).
Also note that there was a big drop in the fatality rate during the most recent recession – even without any lowering of the speed limit. The only thing the 55 mph speed limit did was increase skepticism of law enforcement, and saddle people traveling at perfectly safe speeds on limited access highways with unnecessary traffic fines.
I remember Joan Claybrook and Ralph Nader claiming that the highways would be red with blood when Congress finally repealed the national speed limit (by then increased to 65 mph) in late 1995. The fatality rate per 100 million miles continued to decline.
I never thought about how tough a Beetle was until I was hit by a ’61 in 1973. The driver of it was in a hurry to get home to see something on TV at 8pm, and was hauling ass northbound at about 70 MPH, according to the OSP report. I was going west in my just handed down to me ’71 Cutlass. I stopped at the stop sign, looked to the left, where the VW would soon appear, to the right, and a car passed me and it was clear, or I thought it was. I pulled out, and my passenger said, “There’s a VW!”, and KABLAM. I saw my windshield disappear and the middle of my dash pop out about 6″. Every window in the Cutlass was gone, the VW hit dead center on the rear of door, and bounced off. Once I got my leg loose of the power seat adjustment knob, which hurt a lot, I slid over and got out the passenger door, as the driver’s door wasn’t going to be opened up anytime soon without crowbars and maybe the Jaws of Life. Were the J of L even made back then? The Cutlass was bent 45 degrees, and we would soon find out the transmission case was broken in two. The VW was about 30 feet away, pointed 90 degrees from when it hit me. It was still running. It barely showed any real damage! The trunk lid was flattened out and all it needed was some prying with a crowbar to get it open. The driver was fine, not a scratch, his wife’s face ate the dash and most of her teeth were snapped off at the gumline. Multiple witnesses told OSP and Toledo PD that the VW had been airborne after passing over the train tracks, and landed just before hitting my car. I was convinced the VW driver would be ticketed for at least speeding as the speed limit was 45, and so was he. Nope, I got the only ticket, for failure to yield. The VW lived on until at least ’75, when I moved out West, and my Cutlass was never driven an inch after the wreck.
I’ve seen VW Bugs versus larger and heavier cars a few times after that and they always seemed to survive a wreck pretty well.
I totaled a ’69 Ford Country Squire with my ’63 VW. It too bounced off, after ejecting me, and drove down the road a half block before coming to rest in a gas station. They must have wondered how it came to roll in without a driver!
I assumed it was totaled, but all it needed was for my to pry off one front fender that was interfering with the front wheel. I tossed it in the back seat and drove it home. I bent out the front end sheet metal some, and replaced the hood and fenders from a donor. The hood didn’t quite latch, so I used a bungee to keep it closed. I drove it for quite some time, and then sold it.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/bug-tales-abrupt-change-of-consciousness/
nrd515, you and the VW occupants got off lucky!
The VW Beetle has a relatively soft front end (no engine), so it has a crumple zone of sorts even though that was not the intention. Second, it hit your Cutlass in a side door, a notoriously weak part of cars of that era. (GM invented the side guard door beam and installed them as standard equipment in all side doors of 1969 models, but only in the large B- and C-body cars; they wouldn’t go into the midsize cars until the Colonnade generation.) Third, your car was hit in the rear door, behind its center of gravity, so your car likely both translated and spun away on impact.
Bottom line, your car served as an effective impact-annuating barrier for the Beetle. If the Beetle had hit an immovable object like a concrete barrier or tree head on at 70 mph, the occupants would have been carried away in body bags.
And lucky for you that your driver door wasn’t hit — you could have been seriously injured or worse.
JMJ, as the Irish are wont to say (think “Jiminy Cricket”, without the surname but with the addition of the parent’s first names). If I had ever had a car that rejected ME, instead of me, it, I’d never have boarded it again! You are indeed lucky to be here telling the tale.
[a reply to Paul’s 2011 VW tale at the end of reply to nrd515 above]
That’s hilarious Justy; I am familar with that Irish exclamation!
Paul did confess he wasn’t wearing a seat belt at the time, so he very well may not have been ejected had he worn the available lap-only belt in his old Beetle.
Ralph Nader was in the vanguard of the modern “activist” who can be found everywhere. It might be his legal background that set the stage for the style of activism that took over. The American legal system is adversarial, meaning you are most likely to get the truth where two opposing sides duke it out with their best arguments in front of a neutral arbiter. Nader and all modern activism proceeds from this system – the problem is that there is seldom an R&T to take up the opposing case. Every time an industry group does it, they are discounted due to bias (which is true) but then the activist is biased too.
R&T did what the press is supposed to do – dive in deep and give us some perspective. We are the “neutral arbiter” when activism is involved, and we are being asked to form opinions after being given only one side – and how many of us have time to do the research into activists’ claims? I know I don’t. R&T in this case at least allowed the reader to see both sides.
An interesting look into the past.
The first generation of GM intermediates had the steering box in front of the front axle. I remember crawling under my 65 Chevelle, which was my first car, and thinking, “Gosh, I hope I never hit something.” The thing to keep in mind is that one needs to look at the car’s crash performance holistically. Every car has its strengths and weaknesses. The Beetle has some scary aspects to its design and construction, yet statistically, deaths and injuries in the cars were no worse than anyone else’s.
We tend to be very critical of the auto industry’s cold-blooded assessment of the costs of safety gear as opposed to the costs associated with human life. Yet this is exactly what the insurance industry does. Otherwise they wouldn’t stay in business. Unfortunately the auto industry, particularly the Americans, were myopic in this regard. They tended to skip the $2 changes that eventually had a major impact down the road. Witness the Pinto gas tank debacle.
IIRC, around 1970, Nader published a book about the VW, titled “Small on Safety”.
I never was a Beetle fan. I found them hard to work on, with mediocre handling and poor heaters. Having the gas-tank for crash-protection did not inspire confidence.
Of course, my Mom’s nightmare 1970 VW Squareback did not improve my opinion.
Happy Motoring, Mark
Yes, I oversimplified by devoting only a relatively short paragraph to my argument, although I did note that the reduced speed limit was a major factor (but not the only factor) for the decline in the US highway fatality rate in 1974-75. You are correct that an important part of varying fatality rates is the economic cycle. Times of recession are highly correlated with steep declines in fatality rates.
The first oil shock directly contributed to a major recession; the second was much less serious and so the resulting recession in 1980 (Jimmy Carter’s last year in office) was much milder. However, the domestic auto industry has a very bad 1980 in terms of sales and profits.
The 1981-83 recession occurred after oil prices began their long decline; the proximate cause of the business downturn was the Reagan administration’s tight-money policy to rein in rampant inflation and sky-high interest rates. (Recall that inflation was 13.5% in 1980 as measured by the consumer price index and the prime lending rate charged by banks exceeded 15%.) The policy achieved it goals but at the cost of high unemployment and steep business losses. This is the period when the US steel industry largely collapsed (think Bethlehem Steel) and huge numbers of Midwest farmers went bankrupt.
Fatality rates dropped sharply again in the early 90s during the recession that sank GHW Bush’s presidency and yet again during the Great Recession and “jobless recovery” of over a decade ago. It will be interesting to see the full effects of the current Covid-19 recession, a recession like no other in living memory.
Paul, I think you are on to something when you mention psychological effects on drivers. It has been postulated that drivers are less “exuberant” during times of recession and therefore drive more conservatively. Clearly, increased joblessness means less discretionary driving which is likely more dangerous than routine driving.
A separate point that I failed to make is the effect of changed speed limits should be examined in terms of before/after studies of fatality rates on the roads in which the limits were changed (rural highways in general and rural interstates in particular). Then roads in which the speed limits were NOT changed (urban highways including freeways) should be used as a control group. When studied in this manner, lowered (and later raised) speed limits were shown to be correlated with reduced (and then increased) death rates. Much more detail here: https://www.iihs.org/topics/speed#effects-of-speed-limits-on-safety
The replacement cost per pound analysis was humorous and reminded my of Thomas Stanley’s 1996 book ‘The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy’. In the book he said that the average millionaires are frugal and buy their vehicles based on the lowest cost per pound, which at the time was a full sized General Motors car. I think this is an excerpt:
“About 15 years ago we did an interview with 10 millionaires. Afterwards, we walked into the parking lot and were surprised to see that almost all were driving Buicks, Fords and Oldsmobiles. One of us said, “These people buy automobiles by the pound!” It’s true. The full size Buick four-door sedan sells for less than $6 per pound. A BMW 740 sedan costs more than $15 a pound.”
Wikipedia offers the following summary of the “Small on Safety” book by Nader in which the VW review is contained. Additional defects are noted than what R&T reported on in the above article.
“Small – On Safety: The designed-in dangers of the Volkswagen is a nonfiction book written by the Center for Auto Safety, with an introduction by Ralph Nader. The book looks at the deficiencies in the safety aspects of the vehicles sold by Volkswagen. It was published on September 11, 1972 by Grossman Publishers. The book is based on a study released in September 1971 by the Center entitled The Volkswagen: An Assessment of Distinctive Hazards. The book concluded that “the Volkswagen Beetle is the most hazardous car currently in use in significant numbers in the United States” and that “the VW microbus or van is so unsafe that it should be removed from the roads entirely.”
“Background
Unsafe at Any Speed: … {a description of the Unsafe book}… The Center for Auto Safety was founded in 1970 by Ralph Nader and Consumers Union to continue his work in studying and advocating for automobile safety. The findings from the Center’s study on the Volkswagen were not based on any independent testing by the Center but instead were based on tests by other organizations. These included Consumers Union and Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory’s Automotive Crash Injury Research Center. The study also looked at complaints by owners and litigation involving accidents.
“Findings in Small – On Safety
The study urged the recall of all Volkswagen vehicles to correct safety defects. Defects noted in all Volkswagens included: faulty door latches, a poorly designed fuel system and gas filler cap, a swing axle suspension combined with the rear engine that caused hazardous handling, weak seatbacks, sensitivity to side winds, and side impact vulnerability. Additional defects noted in the VW bus included poor acceleration, inadequate protection in front end crashes, and frequent horn failure.
“Responses
In response to the 1971 study, Volkswagen said that the cars “meet or exceed all safety standards.” The most detailed response to the 1971 study was by Road & Track magazine. In its April 1972 edition, they published an article entitled Ralph Nader vs. Volkswagen, and subtitled An evaluation of ‘The Volkswagen: An Assessment of Distinctive Hazards.’ The article was written by John Tomerlin, a writer of novels and television scripts. He was also a sports car enthusiast who wrote for Road & Track and Car & Driver magazines. The article concluded that “Ralph Nader [should] observe the ‘ethical imperative’ to recall the VW Report and publicly retract its inaccuracies.”
“Effect on federal legislation
The book was most notably featured in hearings held by the United States Senate on requiring auto manufacturers to provide free repairs on mandatory recalls. At that time, the auto manufacturers often required repair costs on the recalls be paid by the car owners. The hearing notably mentioned a recall on 3.7 million Volkswagens for defective windshield wiper systems. Volkswagen had required that the owners pay for the repairs. The hearing included excerpts from Small – On Safety, the Road & Track response, and various correspondence between the Center for Auto Safety and Road & Track.”
So, it would seem that Nader’s book lived on, as reported in the New York Times, and in his book, and subsequently in on line sources. Thankfully, this CC article is also cited in the google responses.
Therein lies the power of media, to publicize findings whether accurate or otherwise, retracted or not, or even subsequently litigated. The message to me is that journalistic accuracy must be somehow maintained, especially in print media, to ensure the public has the facts correct. The Wiki page seems to present an unbiased summary of the book itself.
There’s a 1972 NHTSA crash test video on YouTube showing a Malibu T-boning a Beetle. The Beetle sustains major damage, although I’d leave it to experts to judge whether the passenger compartment of the VW is severely deformed. For some reason the driver dummy in the VW doesn’t appear to be wearing a seat belt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCL–yVBMiw
Admittedly the Beetle had been redesigned by 1983, but this video of crash tests for both Beetle and Rabbit models for that year makes for interesting viewing. What do you think you’re going to see?