You know what I think is important for cars, but seems to be wildly uninteresting to the big companies that actually make cars? Forgiveness. Yes, dammit, forgiveness! Specifically cars that are forgiving of our all-too-human propensity to smack into things, sometimes. Really, it’s a wonder we don’t do it a hell of a lot more with our cars – they’re big things that move fast and there’s lots of them and the world is absolutely jam-packed with pylons and bollards and trees and buffalo and big, jagged rocks and all kinds of things you don’t want to drive into. And the consequences of driving into such things, in a modern car, are quite dear. Modern cars, safe as they are, are incredibly expensive to repair when it comes to minor damage.
This wasn’t always the way! Carmakers once prided themselves on how much abuse a car could just shrug off! Those days are long gone, but, at least to me, not forgotten. I really do believe forgiveness is an important factor in mechanical systems! Humans are fallible, and you can either pretend not to notice that or design things from the very start that accepts this extremely true aspect of the human condition.
Assuming that humans are your target market (and, frankly, they should be, as my own calculations suggest that humans and human-operated organizations control well over 70% of the fungible currency on the planet) then it would only stand to reason that you’d build things that understand the peculiarities of being human. In the case of cars, that includes sometimes driving into things.
I’m not talking about catastrophic wrecks, I mean backing into a hydrant or tapping the bumper of the car in front of you in traffic, stuff like that. Little, common errors. The sorts of things that, really, you shouldn’t have to pay so dearly for. And yet, with modern cars, you absolutely do pay dearly. Sometimes very dearly.
So, why is that? Why are car body repairs about 20% (in 2023) than the year before, and why are they continuing to be so expensive? A lot of it is because modern, advanced components like headlamps are now specialized units designed for one model only, and can not only cost around $1,000 (look, here’s a mass-market 10-year-old car that has $700 headlights) but are also positioned often right at the car’s corners, where they are very vulnerable even in minor incidents.
There’s also the fact that the extremities of modern cars are now filled with cameras and sensors and radar emitters – all kinds of expensive stuff, right there, on the bumper, the part designed to take the brunt of any impact. Look at this diagram of expensive and fragile electronic parts from a major OEM:
Look at that! three radars, a camera, and parking sensors, all in that front bumper. It’s nuts. Have you ever seen someone with an expensive DSLR camera running around with arms extended, the camera held out in front of them, and when you ask them what they’re doing, they say “oh, I hold this expensive camera out way in front of me just in case I run into any walls or poles or something, the camera will take the brunt of the impact?” My guess is that, no, you haven’t seen that, because that’s nuts, and yet that’s exactly what modern cars do.
This wasn’t always the case! There was a time when carmakers gave not just a shit about this sort of thing, but gave a very big, robust, rich, healthy shit about it, designing cars that were – yes, here it comes – forgiving of minor wrecks and shunts, and they accomplished this in a variety of clever ways. Why, look at what GM alone managed to do, how many different approaches they had to the same fundamental problem: how can a car smack into something and come out undamaged?
This was a whole commercial about bumpers! Look at all these different approaches: urethane-rubber front ends, huge energy-absorbing, self-restoring shock-mounted bumpers, hinged grilles, sliding grilles – and these things actually worked!
Of course, this wasn’t really all because GM was so altruistic – there were federal laws that went into effect in 1973-1974 that mandated that cars needed bumper systems that can absorb five mph impacts with no damage at all. All carmakers selling cars in America had to have them, but GM really got into it, making multiple commercials featuring them:
And, it’s worth noting, they didn’t just settle for big chromed diving board bumpers; look at that GTO in that ad. It has that big owl-like beak in the center, which was what they called their Endura bumper. The GTO got it first, but the concept soon spread to other GM cars like Camaros and Trans Ams and Chevelles, with cars getting full-face urethane masks that concealed steel bumper components, and the whole thing could deform and reset itself after minor impacts.
It wasn’t just GM doing this, of course. Hinged grilles and full-rubber faces could be seen on cars from the rest of the Big Three, like the Dodge Charger/Rampage:
…and Ford, on a number of cars, including the oft-overlooked EXP:
All these cars had deformable faces that you could whack into the corner of a brick steakhouse at five mph and just back away and pretend nothing happened. I bet that happened pretty often, even. And if you broke a headlight there, all these headlights were standard sealed beams that fit pretty much any car, across make and model, and were cheap, plentiful, and could be found pretty much anywhere you could buy motor oil.
Of course, carmakers being the cheap bastards they are, this wonderful period of forgiveness didn’t last, and eventually the carmaker lobbyists convinced the right people, and in the early Reagan era the bumper standards were rolled back, starting with the 1983 model year, to 2.5 mph impact speeds, front and rear, and the acceptable damage was reduced from Phase II standards (pretty much zero damage post-impact) to Phase I standards (no damage to safety-related parts and exterior surfaces not involving the bumper system – lamps, fuel, exhaust, and cooling systems).
Oh, and the best part is that the justification for this significant reduction of standards was that carmakers said the extra weight saved by having less robust bumpers would help with fuel economy. It didn’t, really. I don’t think the carmakers actually really believed it would, but that’s just me, cynically speculating.
It’s all so frustrating. Minor collisions can be brutally expensive to repair, and I have no idea why the insurance industry is fine about this. I’m sure there’s complex and even more frustrating reasons far beyond my limited understanding. But I don’t care, because it doesn’t matter if there’s some convoluted financial reason, the point is that car owners would be happier if minor wrecks could just be shrugged off.
And yet, this seems to be precisely nobody’s priority now. Safety is, sure, and that’s great, and I get that cars are wildly safer than ever before. A lot of that has to do with how energy is absorbed in impacts, about crumple zones and that kind of thing. But the idea that any of that disqualifies a car from being more forgiving in the far more common, far more minor sort of wreck is absurd. Cars could be designed with forgiveness in mind. Sensors and lights could be placed in less vulnerable places.
I’m not saying it’d be easy, but I am saying it’d be worth it, to not be looking at a bill of thousands of dollars every time a mailbox is backed into or a decorative lawn anvil is driven over. And I know is it can be done because it was done, about five decades ago.
I just want a car as forgiving of my failings as a 50-year-old GTO. Is that too much to ask?
I remember when there was an informal sort of competition amongst the Big Three automakers for who could build the stoutest 5MPH bumpers, particularly for cars that were expected to be sold primarily as bread-and-butter daily commuters and grocery-getters. The kinds of economical cars expected to soak up all kinds of parking lot and bumper-to-bumper traffic abuse.
Ford pretty much got the mic-drop with the first-generation Escort when, during a standard frontal bumper test, the Escort damaged the collision target, while coming away unscathed itself. (IIRC, I think it was Car and Driver that reported that, in case anybody wants to hunt down the original source.) It was definitely good for a chuckle, and you never quite looked at an Escort in traffic the same way again.
In general, I often miss those cheap-and-cheerful small cars of the 80s and 90s. So many good, sturdy little cars that were thrifty to own, practical, and often even fun in a slow-car-fast kind of way.
had one of those as my first four wheel vehicle. bumper was fine about mild impacts, but the alignment was not. i think that car went out of alignment if i sneezed going over a pavement seam.
I could have used that kind of feature on our 1978 VW T2 Bay window bus, that one time when i backed it into a fire hydrant (wasn’t visible for me through the rather high placed letterbox shaped rear window on that car):
I had to unbolt the bumper and beat it out from the inside with my biggest hammer, and even give it some white paint over the scar. Took almost an hour! 😉
I can only dream of the damage and cost that would have caused any post-1990 car… But it sure would have been nice with Volvo 244 style shock absorbers in the bumper brackets. Typical VW – always so cheap..
> I have no idea why the insurance industry is fine about this
Because they just increase the premiums to match the increased risk and/or cost of damage.
Exactly, most states regulate the insurance industry so insurers can’t just readily jack up prices and suddenly net fat margins. But….. higher repair costs mean they can justify higher premiums to their state regulators, which means more revenue, which means more profit yet even though their margins end up being pretty similarly sized.
Wow. This is DejaVu. My wife and I were mulling over this very subject while out on a walk two days ago; How consumers forced makers to put big bumpers on cars to minimize accidental cost. This was followed up with demands for cheap headlights (sealed beams). The next generation disliked the big bumpers so the makers begin making them decorative and by 68 they are expensive chrome strips on Vettes and Camaros that won’t take a bump. Another yell goes up and the 5mph bumper is born, but new buyers hate them so makers devise ways to cover them up with rubberized fascias. Once the bumpers were buried, the subject was sidelined as “crumple zone” safety, then they began stylizing the headlights into the fascia, asserting the inner bulbs are cheaper than sealed beams … and we’re right back to square one!
I am not sure where you got the different ideas…
Sealed beam headlamps were legislated in many states in 1940, following the introduction of 7″ round sealed beam headlamps by GE. The headlamps prior to the “sealed beam headlamps” weren’t standardised and had lot of issues with water leaking into the housing, leading to the rust and diminished performance. When that happened, the onus was on the owners to source the replacements, especially in the rural areas. The 7″ round sealed beam headlamps could be stocked at every fuel filling station, supermarket, and like everywhere. However, the states refused to allow the better headlamp design and performance introduced in Europe in 1957. and finally gave in to the smaller round headlamps for 1958. It wasn’t until 1968 when the headlamp standards were codified into the federal regulations.
Europeans used the different technology that allowed cheaper replacement: the glass lens could be popped out and be replaced cheaply as well as easier access to the reflector for cleaning. However, the US regulations insisted on sealing the entire headlamp as to avoid people getting burnt by touching the illuminated headlamp bulbs (sure, putting hand in the fan housing, accessory belts, and exhaust pipes are safer than touching the headlamp bulbs). Case in point: Audi 80 headlamps for the US and Europe were essentially the same with one minor difference. The US version had both reflector housing and lens glued together. The replacement cost? The European version was about $50 to $60 for the glass lens, and the US version was $400 for the entire unit.
The battle ram bumpers weren’t pushed by the consumers. Prior to 1974 standard, many bumpers were at different heights and shaped in many ways that would cause lot of damage if not careful. DOT and NHTSA assumed that the stronger bumpers would alleviate the higher repair and replacement cost. However, the agency started with the standard that did not reflect the real world driving experience (neat frontal collision at 5 mph), then the standard was modified to require the same for the rear collision and use of pendulum or immobile pole to stimulate the “spot collision” (which, again, did not always reflect the real world experience). Those bumpers failed the “Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act of 1972” when they turned out to be too expensive to “operate”, i.e. weight penalty and lower fuel economy, and some bumpers had the “one-time use” shock absorbers that must be replaced after the collision. Many owners weren’t aware of it until the next collision occurred.
What’s so ironic is that DOT NHTSA refused to mandate the external rear-view mirror housings that could be moved when colliding with the object and taillamps with separate amber-coloured turn signal indicators. Many times, you could see the cars with mirror housings breaking away from the doors and hanging down by their control cables. The amber-coloured turn signal indicators have been proven to be beneficial many times over. Same with the “killer” air bags (1992 standards changed that to include more percentile after more than 200 women and people of smaller stature were killed by the air bags) and useless motorised shoulder seat belts.
“Minor collisions can be brutally expensive to repair, and I have no idea why the insurance industry is fine about this. I’m sure there’s complex and even more frustrating reasons far beyond my limited understanding.”
Because its not THEIR money, its YOUR money in the form of higher premiums. To them its just a bigger tax write off.
Thanks for reminding me, Torch. I need to repaint my decorative lawn anvil, this weekend. The day-glo orange is starting to fade. Wanna make sure I don’t run over it, again. You’re not right, man. That’s why I come here.
Speaking of repairable damage, I hope your new “heart hoses” are holding up OK. Glad you weren’t “totaled” by Blue Cross/Blue Sheild.
There aren’t even door mouldings/rubbing strips anymore. Sure, it’s a cleaner look when the car is new but after a few years of enduring school or supermarket carparks, it’s not such a clean look anymore!
Had a 69 442 convertible buddy was driving it and hit the back of a Pontiac 6000, the cop couldn’t find any damage on my car but the other car was a mess, of course in a bad accident we would die in the 442 due to a lack of crush zones
I’m not convinced that new cars have crumple zones and old ones don’t. You crash any old car and it’ll crumple up and crush, it’s not like they’re actually undeformable bricks.
You crash any old car hard enough and it will deform, yes. But I can show you from personal experience that old cars are absolutely not designed to protect you by crumpling. They are not designed with crumpling in mind, they are designed to be sturdy and strong. And if you hit them hard enough to actually damage them, most of that impact will be transferred to the passengers.
August of last year, I was rear-ended in my 1966 Thunderbird. I was at a dead stop, and the Kia that hit me was going 30 mph at the time of the impact. The crash had enough force to shorten my car by about 4 or 5 inches at the corners, and a lot more in the middle of the rear bumper, as well as buckling my passenger side rear quarter panel pretty badly. However, the unibody frame under all that didn’t buckle or deform at all, and in fact the car still ran and drove perfectly the rest of the way home afterwards – it even tracked straight and all the lights still worked.
The Kia however? Front end completely smashed in, airbags deployed, front wheels pointing in opposite directions. The safety features did their job and the old lady behind the wheel was unharmed, aside from a minor paper cut on her hand from a piece of interior trim. I, on the other hand, now had whiplash because my car didn’t absorb the impact – it actively resisted absorbing any impact, so the impact (and lack of headrests) transferred the impact to my neck. That lady was in a comparatively much worse crash than me, and came out less harmed.
Now, this was a low-stakes and relatively low-speed crash. The addition of headrests alone in a modern car would’ve mitigated things. But the dramatic difference in the level of damage between the two cars will always stay with me. Any metal object will deform if you hit it hard enough, but that doesn’t mean it has crumple zones – a crumple zone is an area explicitly designed to absorb an impact like a big metal cushion to transfer as little of the collision’s energy as possible to the passengers. Old cars are designed to RESIST deforming during impacts, transferring as much of the collision’s energy as possible to the fragile meatsacks inside.
Furthermore, modern cars are designed not to stab, slice, or impale you with chunks of metal body structure in a serious crash. Old cars never took that into consideration. If I had been in a front end collision in my T-bird, I very well could’ve been impaled by the steering column or even injured by a fender that decided to punch its way into the interior. Even engines were known to punch holes in firewalls back in the day, joining the occupants of the vehicle and causing harm to them.
Now, will this knowledge of the inadequacy of old car safety features stop me from enjoying old cars? No, and my wrecked T-bird will see the road again once I’ve acquired enough funds for proper repairs. But it has shown me that crumple zones are no joke. When driving old cars, have fun, but be extra diligent, practice defensive driving, and understand that what you are driving will not protect you in any way. Understand the risks and respect them.
Very well said!
Old car = Arnold Schwarzenegger
New car = Chris Farley
Yes, if you were inside Arnold Schwarzenegger during a collision, Arnold would be fine but you would not. If you were inside Chris Farley, you would be fine but Chris wouldn’t be.
You know, maybe Thunderbirds are just tanks. One of my friends has a story of am early T bird rear ending his 71 Celica and the Celica crumpling nicely while the T bird was essentially unharmed.
Thank you for your insights, I do appreciate hearing about these kinds of learning experiences.
I’ve often compared it to a tank when it comes to reliability. When I bought mine, it was running on 7 cylinders, getting 5 mpg, taking 10 minutes to warm up every morning, and internally the engine was in abysmal condition to say the least. And yet, it got me from A to B without fail every day. It simply refused to stop working, no matter how bad it got. It’s one of those cars that will run poorly longer than most cars will ever run.
When I was rebuilding the engine, I’d take certain parts like the cylinder heads to machine shops to have them rebuilt, and they’d say things like “these are the worst valve guides I’ve ever seen” and be surprised they came out of a running car. Post-rebuild, it starts quicker and gets better gas mileage, and I expect it to easily last another 100k miles before I rebuild it again, but it would probably keep going without a rebuild anyway.
Needless to say, when society collapses, I’ll feel safe in the ‘bird. That thing will run forever easily.
I had a few 70’s Ford Trucks. You could actually look at the body and see crumple zones being fazed in. Most obvious was the hood, old ones were beg metal slabs with braces, while the newer ones you could see cutouts that were designed to let it fold in certain places.
I don’t know about that, my 1995 f150 has a very well braced hood. I do know that staring in 1993 and only on half tons, Ford added a waffle fry lookin zigzaggy crumple area to the front of the frame.
They were still braced the same, but had a cutout.
Just after high school, a friend backed his 71 challenger into a tree at about 30-60 mph. The actual speed was unclear as alcohol and youth were involved. The car was nicely horseshoed around the tree. There were few straight panels remaining on the car. He ended up with some minor bumps, and a collection of tickets. A modern car wuld likely have been wrecked as well, but not as thoroughly destroyed.
Happened to be around a newish Raptor this weekend. The taillights had cute little designs on them touting the blind spot monitors—and it had those expensive little sensors on all four corners at a good height to hit tumbleweeds or whatever prerunners barge through.
“Cool truck, bro”
Welcome to late capitalism.
You can’t rebel if you’re too busy trying to make ends meet. Simple strategy, but clearly effective.
Unless you’ve been pushed to the point that you have nothing left to lose, and then heads start to roll.
Keep them distracted with contentious politics and, if all else fails, war.
@jason, check peugeot’s rear bumper on all their line up, but especially visible on the 408.
Is this intended for me or for Torch?!?!?!
We can’t all have pressed ham bumpers.
Going to pass right over Saturn’s heavily advertised plastic side panels (and yes, the similarly equipped Fiero and Dustbuster vans)? I loved the display they’d have at car shows encouraging you to jump on one.
While I am a fan of any Saturn mention, this was about bumpers, so the side panels are totally relevant.
It is about forgiving body panels… I think we’ll forgive this one’s impact
That is a great example of post-1983 caring about crash damage, but he was talking about nowadays, and that was over 25 years ago
I get that, but it’s still post-deregulation, and they were at least kept in use until just over 15 years ago (IIRC, the Ion and first gen Vue had them).
Thank you, Jason. This is part of the reason why my insurance rates continue to climb, despite a clean driving record. Wanton disregard for consumers by automakers, socialized coverage by insurers. It pisses me off.
It doesn’t help that a lot of people probably think bumpers are still functional bumpers.
Auto Makers:
” we already have your money and your agreement to pay for the loan, as such we don’t give a shit…”
Just a point of consideration. Insurance companies basically don’t care about physical damage. Bodily injury yes, but property, not really at all. This is because they make percentages of everything, such that the larger the amount, the more they make. Sure, they can have bad luck and go under, but virtually all auto carries get their rates approved by each state and those rate settings usually include some profit percentage. Not amount, but crucially, percentage. So the more it costs to repair newer cars, the more they can charge and thus the more they make. Nice work if you can get it.
And they’re essentially all in it together. Coverage is mandatory for liability and contractually obligated if you have a loan (virtually everyone) so you’re either going to pay Peter or Paul. You don’t like it? Fuck you. Either pay us, them, or the law when you get caught. Their is some competition amongst themselves, but that is more for other reasons than to keep rates down.
Carriers do care about injuries though because those can be hugely costly by comparison and the people running these companies are not all complete monsters, just greedy like most others. Healthcare anyone?
Note that many of the things I said here are gross oversimplifications of quite complicated subjects, but also grossly correct.
> the people running these companies are not all complete monsters
[citation needed]
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Some (many?, most?) of them are monsters. Just not every single one of them. I met a decent one once…
Yes! 1,000 times Yes!
Repair costs are ridiculous.
Insurance rates are ridiculous.
And, given similarly-soaring vehicle aquisition costs … is it really too much to expect a little built-in protection?
Remember when people used to say things like “so glad I ran into you?” Not anymore.
Certainly not aesthetically, but I’ve missed the old chrome impact bumpers for quite a while for the lack of worry they provided. I don’t engage in the kinds of shenanigans where I actively used those bumpers to their fullest extent and they only would have saved me once from myself in the last 25 years of modern cars (still that little dent was a $2500 repair on that papier mache Mazda!), but even just the peace of mind they provided when parallel parking somewhere tight and having to leave the car there to whatever potential idiots are parked to either end of you was valuable. And, IME, those bumpers were good for a deal better than 5 mph.
I KNOW they were good for far more than 5 mph, at least in the case of my 1978 Chevy Malibu. One morning, after working a double shift at a restaurant, I fell asleep at the wheel and ran into the back of a small Toyota pickup that had a large steel “work bumper” (as we called it back then in 1982) on it. I was going about 40 mph, but woke up in time to lock up the brakes before hitting the truck, so I was going at least 10mph at impact. The truck’s bumper was folded up underneath the back of the truck, but the only thing that happened to my Malibu was the vertical plastic caps popped off the bumper. I picked them up, popped them back on, and you couldn’t tell anything had happened.
I was with a friend in a ’84 Delta 88 when he hit black ice and we slid into a big planter made of railroad ties filled with soil on a traffic island. Impacted on one corner at around 20 mph and spun off almost 180*. Broke and dislodged several railroad ties and not a sign of anything on the Oldsmobile. I also used to ram all kinds of stuff with the impact bumpers of my Subaru without a mark. Even smashed a Dodge Spirit that tried to cut across me at an intersection and received nothing but a crack in a marker light. Spun the Dodge, damaged the quarter panel, and spun the bumper cover off in a separate direction. Even the cop commented on how well the GL kicked the Dodge’s ass.
Maybe not exactly the same thing, but I miss when automakers offered good-looking steel wheels. So forgiving of dings and scratches compared to today’s alloys, and no plastic hubcaps needed.
GM’s 1980s efforts (esp. the “rally wheels”) were particularly sharp.
As a former tire repair worker, I do not ever miss them at all. Fucking tinworm would make my life a living hell trying to seal rusty rims. That said, it was the Chicago area. Alloys cost more but leak so much less.
Good point I hadn’t considered! How much of an issue do you think it is these days, if only b/c how many base models of anything are running around out there?
I really have no idea. The nightmares from rim rust still linger to the point I try not to think about it. I know steelies have their place and perhaps aren’t as prone to rust as they were in the early eighties. They are cost effective and strong. I just never prefer to never have to deal with them again.
I’ve been out of the industry for twenty years now, but this bothers me deeply because I know how easily, and affordably it can be rectified. My predecessor had made the prototype bumper core for the Viper, and had taken it upon himself to also mock up a version that could handle a 15mph impact without damage. No one was interested in exceeding the requirement! During the few years I was directly involved with bumper cores, I was dismayed they got thinner every year to save pennies! It is inexcusable that the minimal bumpers we have now are allowed to be mounted flush, assuring body panel damage with the slightest of hits.
Not only that, but what about ultra-low air dams that block the whole area between the bumper and the ground? Parking curbs, steep driveways, deep potholes, etc, chew those things up like crazy. At the very least, they should have cheap, easily replaceable, sacrificial guards or rub strips that just clip onto the vulnerable leading edges so you can just swap them out as needed.
Yep, replaceable rubber strips were done in a saner time.
My 2012 Focus SE had something like that. There were two black pieces along the bottom of the bumper cover that were about $25 and 2 minutes to replace and took the brunt from something like pulling too far into a parking space with a protruding end curb you didn’t notice. However, that and maybe damage from repeatedly scraping a steep driveway were about the only situations it worked for.
My 2010 has those too. They’re pretty chewed up at this point, mostly b/c one night I had no choice but to go over a truck tire chunk on the freeway.
Bright yellow clip-on edge protectors for air dams?
I had that on my Chevy from the 90s. Replaceable black plastic lower lip on the front air dam, affixed from behind with large bolts driven into big molded bosses that would never split or crack. I drove and parked gently, so it never accumulated enough scrapes to be worth replacing. And if it did nick an unusually high bump stop in a parking lot, no big deal; it was made out of a soft but tough plastic that flexed but didn’t crack or gouge easily to begin with. It did its job quite well. Today, automakers would complain about the needless extra material and parts driving up the cost per bumper/fascia assembly.
Has there ever been a Viper collision below 15 MPH?
One word: Capitalism. Car makers would much rather sell you a new bumper, headlight, whatever, than invest the extra time & money to develop this. The only reason they did it before was because they were forced to.
THIS!
There’s a certain automotive writer/buddy who posts his press loaners on Insta – and I’m the one always commenting “Where are the Bumpers?” or “How much extra are actual bumpers?”
And yeah – I’ve backed into a brick porch, a garage wall, a carport post and a neighbor’s truck.
And other people have used my car as a parking guide.
I would really like my big chrome bumpers back please.
Now can we talk about low profile tires and curbed wheels?
Because a terrible ride and destroyed wheels are better than whitewall tires or something?
Totally re curbed wheels. I often parallel park my Focus, and try as I might, the wheels aren’t perfect anymore – I’d love it if Ford offered good looking (e.g. not gloss black with spare tire round holes) steel wheels, but I know those are never coming back.
So many people complain about the big rubber bumpers added to some of the cars in the ’70s to meet these requirements, and yes, while they may not be pretty, they’re pretty forgiving.
Also, it was more of an issue on older, pre-existing designs that had to be retrofitted to meet the new requirements, cars designed from the outset to have the 5mph bumpers eventually incorporated them pretty well.
Of the Big 3, Chryslers generally had the best integrated 5mph bumpers on their full-sizers.
But even before the 1973-74 transition – the big chrome bumpers on American and German cars still did a great job of protecting the bodywork of our cars.
Much better than the matte grey/black plastic bumpers of the 1980s
People say the 5mph bumpers ruined the lines of the Euro R107 (Mercedes SL from 1972 to 1989 IIRC). I actually think the US spec model looks better with the big bumper and dual sealed beams. The Euro spec model has no chin and the bumper fixes that.