gen1 850 crash performance/general safety

[jblackburn]

A 50-mph rear end collision into a Volvo would look about the same as that Camry probably did. Volvos are probably some of the safest, yes, but that comes at a definite price premium for newer models (a new S60 starts at $35K), which sounds like a concern for the OP. Even a used S60 can come in over 10-15K. Mercedes/BMW's are arguably at the tops of their classes too, but again, you pay for that. In my opinion, crash test ratings should be included with the research into ANY new car - and all of those fare well for much, much less $.

As was stated above, the point of the car body is to distribute the impact throughout the car to lessen the impact on its occupants. Newer cars are designed to crumple, and some of the best-selling cars (like the ones talked about above) also have very strong safety points. And some don't - the 1998-2002 Accords were notorious for breaking people's legs in crashes. 2002-2007 Jeep Libertys, arguably one of the best-selling small SUVs, throw people through the windshield.

Four friends that I knew from high school were killed in car accidents within recent years. One in a Honda CRX head-on collision, one in a 2005 Ford Taurus that hit a tree, one in a VW New Beetle that slid off the road in the rain, and one was thrown from the back of a Jeep Wrangler. They were all tragic, and I wish they were all here today.

With close family, I have been more lucky - almost all of us have been in something some way or another.

My dad hit a deer (and a Cadillac Deville a few years later) in my mom's 1974 BMW. Damage to the car was pretty extensive, and had it been my mom driving instead of a big guy like my dad, I don't know if she'd have been OK.

My sister and her friend were in a bad wreck in a 2001 Honda Accord; fortunately they both made it out with only a few bruised ribs from the seatbelts.

Head on collision with drunk driver in a Lumina

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I was in a wreck with a girl in a Chevy Cavalier that rear-ended a Nissan that turned from a red light while we were doing about 35. The Cavalier was totaled, the impact hurt like hell, and I had a sprained wrist from trying to find something to grab on to to brace myself when it was punched by the airbag.

My mom was hit in a 1987 Buick Century a few years ago by a tractor trailer. It barely did anything to the car - smashed the taillight and bent the trunk a little bit, but she's still got injuries in her wrist and foot to this day. The car took the impact like a tank; it didn't crumple and distribute the impact as it should have.

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As it is, out on I-81 surrounded by trucks everywhere, I feel loads safer in my Volvo than I ever did in my 1988 Accord.

[Ozark Lee]

My very first car, a 1965 Chrysler Newport station wagon, got rear ended by a Volvo P544. The insurance company totaled my Chrysler but the Volvo fared very well, the stoned teenage girl walked away as happy as she was when she hit me with no visible injuries. Totaled to the insurance company on my Chrysler was a bent rear bumper so we drove the car for another 5 or 6 years and cashed the check.

The plus was that I was only 13 years old at the time and she was older than me and she actually had a drivers license. My mother couldn't see at night so I always had to drive home if it was dark when we left from somewhere - from about age 12. My mother swapped places with me so that she was the driver when the cops got there. I finally got a drivers license on my 14th birthday which you could do at the time in Kansas.

With all of the nanny state crap that is going on I am frankly surprised that I survived childhood.

The first car that I can remember was my Grandmother's Nash Metropolitan. It didn't have seat belts but I do remember that I got in some real trouble for dragging my fingernails through the rear deck which was a kinda mushy plastic putty covering.

We didn't have rear facing child seats.

Next was my stepfather's Studebaker Lark. It didn't have any seat belts either.

We progressed though a couple of other cars (as I recall we had a Ford Falcon Station Wagon with wood grain sides and an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser) to the Ford Sport Custom pickup truck. It did have a cover over the bed but my sister and I rode from Kansas City through Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Montana, both Dakotas and Iowa, back to Kansas in the back of the pickup with no seats, no seat belts, and thus no rear facing child seats.

I think the '65 Chrysler had front seat belts but I'm not so sure about the rear seats. We had no rear facing child seats but then again I was driving the damn thing at that point due to my mother's vision problem. I drove it from Kansas City to Louisville in a day at age 13 and that was before the interstate system got as good as it is now and there was a lot of 2 lane stuff in the mix. I really wish that my mother knew about the high beam thing, it would have made the night portion of the journey much easier if I knew about the switch on the floor.

The cool part was that gasoline cost 19.9 at the time so, even with the big 383ci engine in the Chrysler only cost a few bucks to fill up with the 22 gallon tank.

Oh, and my parents smoked cigarettes, in the house and in the car.

This was a long way to get where I was going in the first place but a Volvo 850 is as safe as you can get. The '96 and on versions all have SIPS which is the side airbag in the seat. Even the early Volvos are very good.

...Lee

[kcodyjr]

Actually, there was much less left of that Camry. Take how I described it literally - there was nothing left from the rear of the glass backward. It was all crumpled into the rear seats, which had been shoved a few inches forward despite the deep trunk. Notice how that S70's trunk went upward? The whole rear end continued to serve as a crash cushion even as it crumpled; by contrast, the Camry's metal sheared off and continued moving straight forward, failing to distribute the energy into the pillars.

Good set of pictures. I'm sorry to hear about your friends. I, too, have been lucky about not losing those closest.

You're quite right about the price premium, which is why if I had to buy new, it'd be a Taurus. More likely, though, I'd look for an early P2 V70; if it has the hips and the side curtains, it's got what the 850 doesn't.

I'm not one to consider crash avoidance and dynamic stability control to be a good thing in my own vehicle, I'll do the driving TYVM, though I'll acknowledge there's a large segment that should have it, and AFAIK that's now a requirement for a 5 star rating. Does anyone have numbers on whether, say, a 2001 V70 has a 4 star rating versus the 1998's three stars?


Edits: Also worth pointing out; that S70's wheels remain in exactly the right position relative to the well, despite there being significant sheet metal damage further forward. This is the Volvo's body slowing down the flattening in the trunk; in this case, enough to end the crash before the seats got displaced. By contrast, that Camry's rear wheels were pinned against the deformed forward edge of the Camry's corresponding well, yet there was little sheet metal bending forward of that point.

They take stars off for any deformation visible around the cabin area, but yet again, this isn't always a good indicator of real world crash performance.

I'll agree with Ozark, you really can't get much safer than Volvo has been since 1996 when SIPS became standard equipment.

[instarx]

For those that think the Renault occupants were killed instantly because of its stiffness while the Volvo's occupants were just hurt because of the Volvo's crumple damage, you are getting the physics wrong. The deep damage of the Volvo helped the occupants of both cars equally by slowing the Volvo and the Renault over a longer distance. Because both cars have similar weight (Modulo 1,220 kg, Volvo 1,450 kg), the g-forces on the cars' occupants were similar - although slightly higher in the lighter Modulo because it stopped a bit faster. (And no, I do not see the head of the Renault's dummy flying out of the window).

Given the basic physics fact that the force of the impact was distributed equally to both cars, the relative damage to the passenger areas is a good indicator of the relative injuries incurred by the passengers. And the Renault passengers came out much better.

[tjts1]

Ok, general discussion question here - I know Volvo's have a great reputation for safety, etc. But modern cars, even the cheap ones, have made leaps in terms of crash safety as well as accident avoidance. I saw a youtube video recently where some english chaps crashed two cars in an offset head-on scenario, one was a mid-90s Volvo 940 and the other a late-2000s hatchback of some kind (some brand they don't offer here in the US, can't remember what it was). The small hatchback fared much better in the competition.

Now, I'd love to keep driving my '94 850 as it costs me nearly nothing to operate, but I do cart two little girls around in it multiple times a day and do some fast highway driving in traffic as well as some twisty mountain roads. Basically I'm willing to pay for all of our safety, but I want to evaluate what I'm paying for, because it's really not obvious to me what the exact tradeoffs are.

My question is this: should I consider, strictly from a saftey standpoint - BUT bounded by $$$, getting a more modern vehicle when/if this one dies? At this point my preferences would be: #1 a $2500 98 V70, #2 a $10k 2004 Mercedes C320, or #3 a $15k 2010 Scion xD. Those cars are simply representative of the general tradeoffs I'm considering - I can see being happy to drive any of them, but if saftey is not notably different between any of the three I'd rather save the dough and drive the 98 Volvo.

To answer your question, take a look at the IIHS tests. They've been conducting the same offset crash test for every car starting with the 850 all the way to current cars.
850
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/rating.aspx?id=36
S60
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/rating.aspx?id=154
C class mercedes
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/rating.aspx?id=205
To the current Scion
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/rating.aspx?id=1408
Current Civic
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/rating.aspx?id=603
As you can tell the 850 is a disaster by comparison to modern cars. The technology has come a long way since the early 90s.
You can check a ton of other cars here.
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/default.aspx

[kcodyjr]

tjts, would you mind pointing out the "disaster" part?

The 850 was the only vehicle you just listed where the driver didn't impact the door, pillar, or roof beams.

Reads to me like the S60 dummy got hurt the most.

[jblackburn]

Here's the video. I can't find the article that went along with it, but it was actually done by Volvo itself in their recent safety campaign. Most of you have probably seen the one where they wrecked the S80 trying to demonstrate the "city safety system". This was part of that campaign.

You can see where the cage deforms a bit on the 1997 whereas the 2009 stays perfectly intact.



This is pretty cool too:
http://fwd.channel5.com/fifth-gear/vide ... crash-test

[instarx]

As you can tell the 850 is a disaster by comparison to modern cars.

I didn't see that from the data. The 850 did get an "acceptable" in one category (deformation of the safety cage), but got top marks in all the other categories. The S60 however, did significantly worse with two acceptable ratings, both to do with issues of passenger injury.

[tjts1]

tjts, would you mind pointing out the "disaster" part?

The 850 was the only vehicle you just listed where the driver didn't impact the door, pillar, or roof beams.

Reads to me like the S60 dummy got hurt the most.

As you can tell the 850 is a disaster by comparison to modern cars.

I didn't see that from the data. The 850 did get an "acceptable" in one category (deformation of the safety cage), but got top marks in all the other categories. The S60 however, did significantly worse with two acceptable ratings, both to do with issues of passenger injury.

Last I checked the 2001 model year S60 is 10 years old. Not exactly current. The S60 went through 2 more mid life updates after 2001 that which improved its crash worthiness further, among other things.
The fact remains that the 850 is a complete disaster in comparison to current cars. Even a Civic does better in the same test. I'm not saying you need to go run out and dump your 850 immediately. I'm certainly not planning on it but I realize the 850 won't do well in a crash with car built in the last few years.
If you're interested in seeing the CURRENT S60:
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/rating.aspx?id=1470
They also added a roof strengh test for roll overs.
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/roof/detailsbyclass.aspx?15

Euro NCAP has a test of the 98 S70 among many other cars.
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/volvo_s70_1998/54.aspx

[jblackburn]

Huh. Good find.

From that

it doesn't look like the S/V70 fairs all that well for the driver's lower extremities, but does alright for everyone else. They mention that the 1999 and 2000 models have better protection for your head/torso.

There's a lot of deformation around the front door/passenger cage in that crash - the "best" ones don't show any deformation there as the crumple zone absorbs the brunt of the impact.

I'd say the low dash is partially to blame for that - I've got a 6'2" friend that drives a V70 who just looks like his knees are right up against it.

Still, looking back at other models from the same time period, 3/4 stars for a car made over 12 years ago isn't bad at all.