Any airbag retro fits done by DMC?

[About time]

I looked at there site and don't see them doing any retrofit upgrades for safety reasons? I'm also scratching my head saying, If they are really a "New Car company" why don't they make some upgrades like they did with the seats?

I think it would only help the brand and enhance desire to own one.

[dn010]

There is a lot involved when it comes to air bags. Sensors. Computer. Air bag units. Wiring. And then there is testing. After all that, replacement and maintenance every time an 'air bag light' goes on. The cost of all this is most likely too great.

[dmcnc]

^adding to the cost, touching anything that affects the car's safety rating in any way is opening yourself up to a lawsuit. The fuel pump recall is a good example. I don't see how the risk would be profitable in the long-run.

[David T]

The engineering and testing to verify an SRS (Supplemental Restraint System) is prohibitive for a small company never mind the insurance that would be necessary to cover any Liability claims. If something like the Takata debacle happened it would wipe out DMC. In the regs for small manufacturers the SRS is not required just because of the huge costs involved. It was successfully argued it would prevent small manufacturers from existing in the first place if SRS was a requirement.

[DMC-81]

Ironically, according to the article in this thread, http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?17...an-amp-the-car , early on in the formative stages of the car, Allstate gave JZD some funds to build a safer car, and I understand that airbags were crash tested in the Delorean during development. You can see the the airbag deploy in this video:



That's pretty good for 1980.

[vwdmc16]

Air bag science and understanding was in an extremely primitive form 38 years ago. There's not a way to Simply retrofit airbags into a another vehicle, the setup and Design and even programming of an airbag system is down to the millisecond is not something you can just slap into another car like a different set of exhaust tips. At least not without millions of dollars of testing and engineering.

I also read about the 40 mile an hour crash test video, the one that looks really horrific. The the car had a faulty door latch that they knew about but didn't to bother fix. That pretty much voided the entire test as the structural rigidity of the compartment cabin pretty much went down to nil. The only benefit of it was really only stressing the importance of having properly working door latches in case of a catastrophic accident in a Delorean.
I think they were just betting on the airbag technology of the future to take care of everything. But putting an explosive in a kevlar pillow case wont be enough if you don't wear your seatbelt or properly latch your door.

Remember this new low production bill is really only intersting or plausible to companies like DMC is because it does not require safety updates, just emission updates.

[Michael]

LOL...would you seriously want an explosive bomb made by DMCH mounted 1 foot in front of your face?

[Nicholas R]

LOL...would you seriously want an explosive bomb made by DMCH mounted 1 foot in front of your face?

This is my exact thought. Not the DMCH part specifically, but just that I wouldn't want to ride in any car that had an air bag willy nilly stuffed up front. Automakers to extensive testing to be sure their airbags help people, instead of hurt them. Without testing, it's just a bomb inside of a bag like Michael said. Heck, even with testing you can still end up with issues; (as indicated by the airbag recalls on both my Ranger and my Civic).

After typing this out, I'm now also assuming there there are likely DOT and legal reasons why DMCH couldn't simply add airbags to the car without an excessive amount of design and testing. Never going to happen.

[CFI]

I also read about the 40 mile an hour crash test video, the one that looks really horrific.

It looks bad, but the engineeering firm that conducted the tests said the car actually did very well. Data from the crash test dummies suggests injuries that were well within acceptable limits at the time, and cabin deformation was minimal.

[Mark D]

My first reaction to this thread was first to ask "why?" and then to laugh out loud given DMCH's spotty history with bringing new products to market. I can't hate on them too much because it's not like they have a dedicated engineering department at their disposal to actually design much. They seem to rely heavily on the vendors who manufacture their reproduction parts to carry the design burden. After the production work is completed it's not like they have an advanced quality control department either to verify what they are receiving meets the required specs.

That being said, a few years back I did some design work related to frontal and side impact crash testing. Essentially we were trying to use a developed air bag system from one vehicle and adapt it to fit another vehicle without having to create a completely new program/profile for the truck. The ECU that controls the air bags is specific to each vehicle and determines the timing and deployment rate for the air bags during a collision. Initial impact speed and deceleration rate at set intervals during the impact are what typically determine the profile and if the airbags will fire or not.

We were adapting an existing system I think we did half a dozen actual crash tests for this one vehicle at three different impact speeds. This was for a heavy duty truck and not a passenger vehicle but the relative complexity of the system was about the same. Had we started from scratch to develop a crash profile it would have meant between 10-15 impact tests. Most of the instrumentation and impact testing was contracted out to a specialized company that we worked along side as we made modifications to the vehicle design so it would match the existing crash profile. The development time took about a year and the bill at the end was high six figures, approaching seven.

SO, if DMCH or anyone else were to attempt anything like this they would be looking and destructive testing on a handful of cars as well as an enormous bill at the end. Given that there is no law or regulation requiring airbags, what would be the point? I'm not sure I understand how airbags would "enhance the brand" or the "desire to own one". I'm genuinely interested to hear opinions though if anyone thinks this is actually a good idea.