The Lotus Grand Tourers

The Elite on first announcement was awarded a Safety Award (DON ?) I believe due to Roll Bars, Side Impact beams, Windscreen bonded to provide greater structural impact strength, Spare wheel location for rear impact strength, front crash impact zone, fibreglass compared with steel body, etc.
I wonder now, and with the Eclat and Excel heritage including these features, what is known by Lotus, Mike Kimberley, Mike at Lotusbits, and others how effective over time have these Safety measures contributed positively during accidents which have ocurred?

Apart from mere curiosity, do we have a pioneering safety car some fifty years after it was defined?
Better than currently produced cars?
Anyone installed an Airbag system?

These thoughts not induced by next week´s Black Friday.



Dave the cog.

I would not recommend fitting an airbag system. Just to give you some of my background I was a forensic collision investigator and vehicle examiner for s police force. As such I went on alot of courses for airbags and was privy to some manufacturers secret 'stuff' on how they were configured. I could bore you all for hours on the fine detail but they are called a supplementary restraint system because they are integrated into other parts of the car like seatbelt pretensioners and the design of the chassis and crash structures inbuilt in modern car design. Airbags have a minimum of two sensors, one on the bonnet slam panel and one near the base of the gearstick and only when both are triggered by an impact will the bag fire. The computer that drives the system is monitoring shocks through the car all of the time and where and how sensors are mounted can effect the readings greatly. There are only 2 or 3 manufactures of the bags and ecu and they supply everyone. Where they differ is the software that is unique to every car design.
Basically you dont want one to trigger when it shouldnt so you cannot retrofit one to a car that isnt designed for it.
Bash

A shame Oliver isn’t around to contribute his views. Not many people know that he moved on to vehicle safety systems design and managed the project to introduce airbags to volume Opel cars in Europe, as well as similar projects in the USA. His projects typically came in below cost and time. I think he was quietly proud to have indirectly saved many lives through his work. I need to go back to his book to recall all the details but if you have it, it’s worth a read.

Cheers, Richard

Excel v lamp post, it will still sting abit...
Bash

Don't even like to think about it!!

Pete

Ouch. Nasty.
Where's Neil? Think we've found his next project
Tony

Thanks Tony, but I'm still quite busy on my own one

I do now know that my car didn't hit a lamp pole as hard as that one did - it just hit various things that damaged every body panel

Neil.

I suspect the chassis escaped unharmed?

So, coming back to Davids thread at the start of this story:- "I wonder now, and with the Eclat and Excel heritage including these features, what is known by Lotus, Mike Kimberley, Mike at Lotusbits, and others how effective over time have these Safety measures contributed positively during accidents which have ocurred?" What would have happened if the drivers door beam had not been present.

By the way, how does a lamp post become embedded in this position?

Marcus wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 14, 2021 10:02

By the way, how does a lamp post become embedded in this position?

Lost the rear and side-wiped the lampost at high speed?

I once lost the rear of the Elite 501 on an icy residential road in Winchester way back in 1982.- It did a 360 and side-swipped the curb.

Luckily, no traffic, no lampost present, and it was a relatively low speed due to the icy conditions.

I know the details of the crash, lost on a roundabout on ice at about 30 mph, driver had bad leg injuries etc but survived.
Cars are not designed to hit narrow solid objects so most cars would have fared similarly, even newer ones. When I examined the car the bit that looked like it could have been a bit stiffer was the floor but it didnt bother me enough to strengthen mine. My mate said that the best car safety move would be to take all the safety stuff out and put a big spike on the steering wheel, that would calm people down a bit.
Bash

Well I can say that when a lovely lady drove into my previous Excel years ago the crumple zone at the front of my car did seem to do its job. I found the deceleration to be very gentle. She managed to somehow suffer "whiplash" though...