Why Crash Test Festivas?

[Mysticle31]

I first saw about 5 Festivas a Pick and Pull a couple of weeks ago. They all have been crashed with the yellow and black stripes on their hoods and sides. Why would someone crash a 13 - 18 year old car? There was bunches of them. Normally when I go there I might see one. Maybe two. Granted I don't go there as much as some of the others on here.

Stickers on the car said it was done by a Safe Technologies and they have 100kph on them. One of the speedometers in the car stopped at 45MPH, which is not quite 100.





Any Ideas? I've never seen this before. Well actually, a couple of days later I saw a bunch of Volvo's like that. I'd lever seen it before when I saw the festivas. Put it that way

[packrat427]

OMG , I think I am going to be sick , I should have never looked at those before work . :puke:

[PaulLehr]

:pukeright: OMG How could they do such a thing!!!

[skeeters_keeper]

ick!!!!! so sad ;(


... the second one looks like it has power mirrors, its an 88-89 GL. prolly a tach too. i hope you grabbed those...

[25Horseplay]

Did you ask about them at all? I wonder if the yard has any information on why they do that?

[superduder]

gone

[Mysticle31]

I haven't asked them about it. Well, I sort of did. They said that some cars come from fire department training. However, there were 5 of them!

I didn't grab power mirrors. Can I use them? Harness too?

Only thing I got was an orange cluster with tach. I think there is another one there if anyone is interested. Does anyone know if I can change the mileage or ODO? My car has 88K on it and the cluster has 150! I'll ask about that later no doubt.

I'd like to find a bague (brown-ish color?) split rear seat if one exists.

[69shelby]

sometimes ford gets sued and they crash old cars for legal reasons.

[Safety Guy]

Where was this lot located, Mysticle? I searched for "Safe Technologies" but found nothing car or crash test related. I'd probably need the area of the country to better search.

Can anyone else do a better search? There's a story in this. We should find out what it is!

Yes, it's sad what happened to these cars, but maybe there is some good safety data to mine.

Karl

[Mysticle31]

It's in California.

Rancho Cordova Domestic Yard. The only yard that discriminates as I recall.

The company is Safe Technologies, Inc

170 River Road
Rio Vista, CA 94571

anything else

They are listed on the bottom of this web page.

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/crashtst.htm

Oh! There is a sticker on the instrument cluster I pulled from one of the cars. I'll look at it tomorrow and see if it has any more info.

[Mysticle31]

Oh yeah, I found these doing a search. Maybe you guys can make more sense of the mumbo jumbo then I can. It looks like some of them are testing their energy absorbent railings. There are some interesting pics though.

On some of these Acrobat Reader told me the page number, some of them it was on the document itself. They may be a page or two off depending on length of the 'cover letters'.

Check out page 11 and 17

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/cc73a.pdf

Page 6, 8, 12, 14, and 16 here is good, pictures!

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/cc75.pdf

2nd page from the end on this one

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/b-69.pdf

Page 9 on this one. This car was red, it must have gone somewhere else

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/b80a.pdf

Page 4 on this one. Head on Impact

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/cc78.pdf

Page 12 on here

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/cc78a.pdf

Page 4, how about a side window impact with a timber utility pole. Grusume pictures!

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/cc81.pdf

Page 9

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/b134.pdf

2nd from last. Great pics, rear ending a tractor-trailor

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/road_hardware/barriers/pdf/cc-67.pdf

[superduder]

gone

[skeeters_keeper]

I didn't grab power mirrors. Can I use them? Harness too?

yeup-shouldn't need the harness either. to use them in your car take the door panel off your car, find the wire thats already there. re-route it up to the plug on the power miror and bingo! don't forget the switch for in your dash too. That plug should also already be in your car.
and if you don't want to use them, sell them on ebay for $50 at least.... sometimes more than $100.

[thewalrus]

Poor little festys

[Safety Guy]

Good work, Mysticle!

Maybe the Festivas were used as a "worst case" type of car?

Than again, most "cars" nowadays seem to be SUVs and pick-ups. "Light trucks."

Maybe the Festies were used simply because they were cheap and considered "throwaway cars." They'd also be easier to handle and use on the specialized equipment due to their light weight.

Interesting stuff. The ends of guardrails have always been problematical. Older designs tended to "spear" vehicles hitting them. When the ends were sunk into the ground, they then became "ramps" and could launch cars into the air or cause rollovers.

Thus, energy-absorbing ends were created to soak up the crash forces and decelerate cars more slowly. I guess they are still working on new designs and modifications.

I only looked at one set of pics. I'll look more later.

Karl