Safety Concept Cars Through the Years

Entrants in the 2007 Michelin Challenge Design aren't the first to tackle the issue of designing safer vehicles. Automakers and others have been creating safety-conscious concepts for several decades.

While we wait the unveiling of this year's winners, the following offers a review of some of the more interesting - and in some cases the most downright unusual -- attempts at safer vehicles from automakers and others:




Aurora
Fr. Alfredo Juliano was a Roman Catholic priest who decided to build cars that were safer and in 1957 he presented his ideas in the form of the Aurora.

Built on a Buick chassis, Aurora featured a plastic body designed to be dent and corrosion proof. The body also had cowcatcher like air-scoop in front and a foam-filled bumper designed to cushion a pedestrian who might be struck by the car.

The car's bubble-like windshield was devised to enhance the driver's visibility -- because of its rain-shedding shape, wipers were not needed - and to provide more room between the glass and the driver or front-seat passenger's heads in a frontal impact.

Not that their heads were likely to hit the windshield: The front seats were mounted on swivel; the concept was that if a frontal crash was imminent, occupants swing turn around and thus be protected by their seats.

The car also had an internal roll cage, side-impact beams, a collapsible steering column, padded dashboard and seat belts.

It was to be priced at $12,000. The prototype broke down repeatedly and had to be towed to its unveiling. The Aurora Motor Co. of Branford, Conn., funded in part by members of Juliano's congregation, went bankrupt after building the prototype and Juliano went to jail for accounting irregularities.




Pininfarina Sigma
With highway safety getting more attention around the world, Italian design and coachbuilder Pininfarina developed its Sigma safe car prototype in 1963.

Based on a mid-sized European sedan, Sigma was engineered with an non-deformable passenger compartment but with deformable front and rear areas to absorb kinetic energy in a crash. Rather than opening into traffic, a single door on either side of the four-seat car slid open.

The steering wheel had a large central padded area and was mounted on a column that would deform in a serious collision. The dashboard also was foam padded, and the design sought to eliminate uneven and dangerous surfaces both inside and outside the vehicle. Each of the four seats was equipped with a seatbelt. Wraparound seats also had tall cushioned headrests.

In an impact, the windshield and backlight were designed to eject from the vehicle. Wipers were mounted below the cowl.

In 1969, Pininfarina built a second Sigma safety car, this one was a Grand Prix racecar designed to enhance safety in racing.




Mohs Ostentatienne Opera Sedan
Bruce Baldwin Mohs of the Mohs Seaplane Corp. of Madison, Wis., also was something of an automotive coachbuilder, starting with International Harvester truck chassis. In 1968, Mohs built the Ostentatienne Opera Sedan, designed to be both luxurious - with gold-inlaid walnut instrument panel, velvet upholstery, Ming Dynasty carpeting, a 110-volt converter, refrigerator and butane heater - and safe.

Because the truck chassis had steel beams running the length of the vehicle, Mohs devised a single, rear-entry door. Hinged at the windshield header, the door incorporated a good section of the vehicle's roof. When the door/roof was opened, a step lowered in the rear bumper to ease entry into the vehicle.

The 5700-vehicle also featured 20-inch tires filled with nitrogen and sealed-beam tail lamps.

Mohs planned to sell such cars for $25,000.




Chrysler Concept 70X

In 1969, Chrysler developed a concept with sliding doors - two on the traffic side and one on curbside. Doors had a vault-like lock help them provide better protection in a side impact.

The car also had an ultrasonic rear proximity warning system that alerted the driver to traffic in a 50-foot arc around the rear of the car.




Mercedes-Benz Experimental Safety Vehicles
From 1971-74, Mercedes-Benz developed five safety concept vehicle prototypes - ESF 03, ESF 05, ESF 13, ESF 22 and ESF 24. Features included passive safety belts, integrated headrests, and special shoulder support for a side impact, recessed instrument panel, hydraulic shock absorbers and airbags.

Mercedes-Benz ESF 13
All of these prototype vehicles went through front, rear and side-impact crash testing.




BMW Turbo
As part of the festivities surrounding preparation for the 1972 Olympic Games at Munich, hometown automaker BMW and its design director Paul Bracq created the gull-winged BMW Turbo, an experimental safety concept car, albeit one with the low-slung and wedge-shaped body of an exotic sports car.

The car featured front and rear bumpers that temporary deformed to absorb energy in a low-speed collision, as well as larger glass areas to enhance the driver's visibility, an automated seat belt system that prevented the car from running unless the belts were fastened, an integrated roll bar and even anti-skid controls.

The packaging included mounting the four-cylinder turbocharged engine behind the passenger compartment, and would become the inspiration for the limited production 1978 BMW M1.




Renault BRV and Epure
The BRV took its initials from Basic Research Vehicle and was Renault's exploration of safety in 1974. The car had reinforced frame structure, rollover protection and other safety features.



Epure (Etude de la Portection des Usagers de la Route et de l'Environnement) followed in 1979. In addition to occupant protection, Epure was designed to lessen injuries to pedestrians with a deformable hood and protective caps over the top of the shock absorbers.




Volvo Safety Concept Car
Volvo's founders said that because cars are driven by people, safety would be at the heart of the vehicles their company would produce. Indeed, it was Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin who in 1959 invented the three-point safety belt that the West German patent office called one of the eight inventions that most benefited mankind in the previous 100 years.

In the 1970s, Volvo presented a series of experimental safety vehicles that featured such things passive safety belts that moved into position when the car was started, an airbag to protect rear-seat passengers when the car was struck from behind, a steering wheel which pulled away from the driver in a frontal collision, an early form of anti-lock brakes and engine mounds that forced the engine beneath the vehicle rather into the passenger compartment in a severe frontal impact.

In 2001, Volvo unveiled its Safety Concept Car built around the principal that more than 90 percent of all important information to the driver is visual and comes to the driver through the windows and windshield.

To enhance the driver's visual information input, the SCC was built with a sensor that adjusts the driver's seat to provide the driver with the best possible field of vision, then adjusts the car's floor, pedals, steering wheel and center console and gear shift lever to proper position for that driver.

Because a vehicle's A pillars need to be strong to provide protection in a collision, they also have tended to get larger and thus to block more of the driver's view. The Volvo SCC had see-through pillars of Plexiglas and metal in a girder-style construction. B pillars curved inward to provide the driver with a better view through the exterior rearview mirror. Additionally, rear-facing cameras and radar built into the rear bumper provided a warning of a vehicle in the traditional "blind spot."

The car also featured headlamps that turn into a corner, infrared night vision, a camera to alert the driver to wandering out of the lane of travel and brake lights that flash to alert following traffic of emergency brake application.

Seats were designed to enhance occupant protection and were equipped with four-point safety belts. Rear seat cushions were height-adjustable to put children in better position for safety-belt use. An airbag was built into the front of the car to protect pedestrians or cyclists in a collision with the car.




Honda ASV-3
The third generation of Honda's Advanced Safety Vehicle program took the form of two vehicles, a car and a motorcycle. It used radar, cameras and image recognition technology, and vehicle-to-vehicle communications to alert drivers and riders not only to nearby vehicle traffic flow but to pedestrian traffic as well.

The motorcycle also was designed to make it more visible to drivers of four-wheel vehicles.

The on-board equipment also monitors traffic signals and alerts a driver or rider if the vehicle is traveling too fast and needs to slow in order to make a safe stop.

The various monitors, satellite navigation system and vehicle-to-vehicle communications also can warn a driver or rider when a vehicle is entering a curve at too high a rate of speed or to warn the driver or rider of traffic it might encounter in that curve.

In the event of a crash, on-board equipment monitors the driver's heart rate and respirations and can relay such vital signs information to rescue personnel.

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