L-R Discovery vs Renault Espace

[sparkes]

Brian

The only saftey item people hear about and probably look for are airbags.

I have to admit I look for at least 2 airbags in a car, 6 if I can get it

Steve

 

[Lol1]

As another note: Caravanners harp on and on about the safe towing speeds and the 85% rule, but take little or no notice about the NCAP safety ratings of the vehicles they drive. Just look at "Tow Car Of The Year" The Kia Sorento.....How many stars, The Kia website is to embarrased to tell you, because its a lot less than 5 stars. You wont look so clever when a Discovery hits you head on!

If acravanners really were cocerned about safety they would all be driving Renaults!

Agreed Martin, the Sorento is rated with four stars. Also, as this is a caravan forum and weight matters, the Sorento is my choice too.

 

[Icemaker]

My alhambra has ten airbags apparently, although i can only find eight. the car would probably be a write off if they all went off together the cost of replacement would be so high, but then again i would not know about it since i would be dead through suffocation lol.

 

[Lol1]

Wouldn't "novelty" airbags be great, at least you could see a lighter side to an accident....

 

[Steve L]

In reply to Lutz's comment about having both feet on the ground and the fact that racing espaces don't compare with road versions.

You may well recall from previous postings that one of my job roles is prototype testing and that often means driving road and race cars on test tracks. For instance the Lotus Exige was born to the roads as a result of omologation rules and Lotus's desire to run a single marque race series. The Aston Martin DB9R has evolved the same way. The Ford GT40, Maclaren, etc etc.

Remember the Renault 5 series one, which had a 2.9 litre mid mounted engine, that again was a born racer let out on the road.

A lot of safety features we take for granted evolved from the race tracks, for example the design of the passenger copartment and the sacrificial impact absorbsion of the crumple zones. Roll bars built into seats on our german sports cars.

If you read the original article you will see the comment that road cars make it onto the race track because they are the best engineered inovations of their time.

The French seem to come up with inovations that sometimes are so far advanced that they don't make sense at the time. Remember the Citreon DS19 and DS21 with steering dipped beam head lights, self leveling suspension.

The mark 1 Jag had a micro fine heated rear window back in the late fifties way before Ford put the inovation in the front of the Mondeo.

 

[Lutz]

Nothing wrong with what you are saying, Steve, but you are talking about developments which have evolved from racing into later mass production. What is dangerous, however, is to assume that such developments in the racing car scene are at the same time also present in current production vehicles.

Besides, the type of crash encountered on a race track is totally different to the average accident on the road where you have oncoming traffic and traffic from the side to contend with, too.