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Question of the Day: What Is The Most Dangerous Factory Built Car In History?


Question of the Day: What Is The Most Dangerous Factory Built Car In History?

This question came to me a while back when I was pulling the front end of the Buford T Justice Caprice project apart. Pulling is probably far too strong a word, because it basically fell apart. I had not been easy on the thing over the last few weeks of its life as an unmodified stocker and my violent treatment had put a real hurting on lots of parts that had been minding their own business for the last 200,000 miles before I came along. The 9C1s were obviously built in a very robust manner and most of the cars on the road today wouldn’t last half the distance on the stock parts that ol’ Buford did.

On the opposite end of robust is where today’s question centers. We’re interested in your take on the most dangerous factory built car in history. While the Pinto had a small number of fires that turned into a media firestorm and the Camry’s basically imagined ability to rocket you out of control were both disasters in the media, neither of these cars qualify for this title…in our book anyway.

The Ariel Atom certainly looks like a death trap, a stock VW with 36hp seems like fodder to be squashed by anything else on the road, a Morgan three wheeler actually appears to have been designed to kill people, and a Citroen 2CV would fold up if directly sneezed on. Those are a couple of the ideas we had on this subject, but there’s got to be a ton more worthy candidates in the annals of automotive history. Hell, if you are a fireman, the Prius could be on this list. Don’t hit that cable with the jaws of life, pal!

What is the most dangerous factory built car in history?


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18 thoughts on “Question of the Day: What Is The Most Dangerous Factory Built Car In History?

  1. Speedy

    DADGUM, two Morgan photos at Bangshift.com in less than 24 hours!

    I’m going to abandon my partiality and assert than the “most dangerous” car title should be shared by the Chevrolet Corvair and the Ford Pinto. Design defects in both cars caused a few unnecessary casualties. But the bigger “danger” is the role these cars played in bringing regulatory and legal “heat” down on the industry.

  2. CTX-SLPR

    Early Porsche 911, all the weight on the back axle, enough power to actually get moving fast, and a suspension that shares much of it’s geometry with the VW and Corvair (where do you think GM got the idea for an air cooled rear engined car?).

    One might also say the Model T with a complete lack of safety equipment, way more power and speed than most of the roads of the time could handle, and a fuel tank mounted more or less directly above the engine and your feet!

    1. Speedy

      But the “T” was typical of the prevailing state-of-the-art in its time. No vehicle had seat belts. The T’s 20-22 h.p. weren’t the most of its time.

      Certainly the earlier “mid-engine” cars (powered buggies like the famous curved-dash Oldsmobile) were even more dangerous because they ran on even worse roads, with less experienced drivers, and had higher centers of gravity, larger and narrower wheels, tiller steering, dangerous uncovered drive chains, and no crush zone whatsoever in front.

      And steam-powered cars could occasionally blow up . . . much less safe than a T.

      1. scott liggett

        Fifty years after the model T went into production people still held the belief that it was safer to be ejected in a car crash. Up into the ’70’s many people thought dic brakes were not as safe as drum brakes.

  3. scott liggett

    I dont remember its name but it was a car that had an airplane engine and a propellor to push it down the road. It also had a hand crank start. Just what you want, a spinning prop right next to your head when you try to start your car.

  4. John

    What about the other three wheelers? I think both Saab and BMW may have made them at one point. Didn’t Richard Dreyfus drive one in American graffiti?

    one of them had a swing open front – including the steering column.

    This site seems to be enamoured with them:
    http://www.wheels3.com/

  5. Lon_H

    Robin Reliant. Look it up on You Tube. Watching Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson repeatedly roll one is hilarious.

    1. ka67_72

      I agree with the Robin. He rolls it at like 10mph. As a car and a space shuttle, it’s 100% a death trap.

      1. Matt Cramer

        IIRC, there was another British three wheeled contraption called the Invacar that made the Reliant Robin look stable.

        But I can’t read this thread without thinking of the Robin that gets flipped over in every episode of Mr. Bean as a running gag. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to do any special mod to it to make it flip, either.

  6. elkyguy

    actually,ctxslpr,i think you can argue that the corvair was more a ripoff of the tucker—and some of the listed 3 wheelers are actually four wheelers(though with a very small space between the rear wheels)—total agreement on the early cars,gastank literally above your legs,glass pretty much the same as what you’d find in your house(no tempered back then)—i think you can also argue that today’s suvs are far more prone to tipping over than the sleds of the 50’s and 60’s

  7. Manifestospeed

    The swing-axle Type 1 VW is undoubtedly the most deadly, based on the numbers built and crashed over the past seventy years.

    Citroen 2CV was also a flimsy whip (See the “Top Gear” 2CV versus Boeing 747 film).

    And pulp-bodied Trabants on the Autobahn after the fall of the Berlin Wall couldn’t have been too safe.

    The roll-over king is the Suzuki Samurai.

  8. John T

    I think the ol Morgan’s getting an unfair rap – sure, it has 3 wheels, but have you ever driven one? Amazingly stable car, you can drift that one rear wheel like theres no tomorrow! Anyway, if a Morgan’s that much more unsafe then ALL motorcycles must be completely unuseable (OK, bad example, bikes ARE a bit unsafe!!) Corvairs and swing axle VW’s and Porsches need a mention – my wife’s friend was in a 60’s VW that rolled at about 5 mph because it was hit from behind as it turned…witnesses said that they were laughing inside the car for a few seconds (obviously nobody hurt at that point) – however it then burst into flames and 4 of them died in it.

    I think one of the more unsafe Aussie cars was the Leyland P76 – they were trying , in the 70’s to compete with GM and Ford family cars – its a weird looking car that will take a 44 gallon drum in the boot to appeal to Aussie farmers – but the bit that didn’t appeal was that they had a habit, because of where the muffler is, of the front seats bursting into flames!! Truthfully not many really went this way but the few that happened were great fodder for the media – nobody wanted one after that…now they’re fairly desirable – there’s a V8 version that uses a copy of the Buick V8 as in Rovers etc.

  9. Ermott

    Picking on the Morgans is unfair. they were designed, built and sold in an era when the average car drove along at about 40 miles an hour.

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