I found these two vintage 1960s crash test videos of the Nissan Bluebird on Youtube. The first video shows the crash tests of a dummy sitting on the rear seat of a Nissan Bluebird 410 crashing at 50 km/h and 100 km/h:
Most probably these tests were done to see the impact of wearing seat belts at the rear seat at 50 and 100 km/h. As you can see the 410 two point seatbelt is pretty useless at 100 km/h: the seat belt fails due to the force of the impact and the dummy is launched and beheaded by the dashboard. Lovely slow-motion replays at the end of the video!
But believe me: even though the carnage looks bad, for that time these tiny 410s were quite safe! Compare that with these GM crash tests! But I still wouldn’t want to be beheaded by my own dashboard…
The second video shows the Nissan Bluebird 510 crash test at 40 km/h, creating a chain crash a few other 410s and a (new?) 510:
This test is actually very ingeniously done: no remote operated brakes, just a plain and simple wirecutter activating the brake system! It is like watching the Mythbusters from 1968! ;)
This test shows the advantages of using both a headrest and a seat belt. In the slow-motion footage at the end you can see that the dummy in the front car stays in place even after this car gets hit three times! The headrest saves the dummy from breaking its neck, while clearly the dummy of the second car wasn’t that fortunate: it hits both the windscreen and breaks its neck due to the front seat lacking a headrest.
Another thing becomes clear with this test: the 510 is a lot safer than the 410! Even though 410s receives a lot of damage on both front and rear ends while the 510 (third in row) crumples a lot more than the 410 to reduce the force of the impact.
I’m glad I’m driving a bit more modern car than these two! However, I seriously doubt a 27 year old car is considered safe according to nowadays standards…
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