Morris Minor Owners Club

A common plan for custom moggies is a good old dechrome, and debumpering.

Many of us love the effect this has on the moggy's looks. There is a very practical reason, however, for why debumpering is a bad idea.

Take the case study of a certain relation of mine, whom I shall not mention, lest it displease/incriminate them. He drives a rather excellent white 1098 two door, which we all love. One day, whilst driving through an awful village with one of the narrowest "high streets" known to man, a lady driver, ignorant of the width of her crappy eurobox, decided to push past him. Of course, a collision followed. Her rear bumper clipped the moggy's rear bumper as the car's passed each other. The moggy was completely undamaged. Her bumper caught round the pointy bit on the end of the minor's valance, being torn completely off in the process. We all had a good laugh about that.

The second example which supports my point is the way in which the self same rear bumper once knocked down a wall outside an indian takeaway (the wall was too low to see out of the rear window). The bumper was undamaged. Not even a scratch. I doubt the boot floor would stand up to that.

So the next time you consider removing your car's bumpers to "clean up the lines", think about other road users, who may not be as good a driver as you, and think about that low lying wall that you can never seem to see in the rear window. It may save you expensive repairs, one day.

Avery valid point Matt

What is the point of painted plastic bumpers on modern cars? The slightest nudge and it's off for a respray or replacement bumper...

I think the idea is to make them more pedestrian friendly, and complement the idea of impact crumple zones.

more pedestrian friendly,

If pedestrians stayed off the road, there would be fewer accidents.

If only this was an 'ideal world'

You would be amazed at the amount of compromise that goes into bumper facia design and bumper beam design. There are requirements for pedestrians, low speed impact with no damage, slightly higher speed impact with no body structural damage and high speed impacts where the bumper must distribute load.

A Minor bumper comes nowhere close to a modern bumper. Yes it may appear that there is no damage but there is a high risk of structural body damage.

It would be so much simplier if pedestrians stayed on the roads, only used crossings and waited for the green man.

My wife's Volvo has black rubber bumpers!
She once nudged a Audi TT when reversing - it pushed the bumper in but only need a pinch bolt to be loosened to straighten it. The Audi - don't ask - plastic and trims all over the road £3K if I remember correctly. But then again the Volvo is designed for a collision with an Elk not a tiny invisible sports car.

A Ford Granada destroyed it's front end on the back of my Seat Leon Cupra at around 15mph - it needed lights, grille, radiator, bonnet, bumper, wings etc - probably a right off. My Seat only needed paintwork, but bodyshop replaced the bumper strengthener as a matter of course - even though it was undamaged. Modern cars can be stonger than you think.

Pete

if pedestrians stayed on the roads,

Whats this? 50 points for a lady carring a shopping bag? Dont you mean off the roads.

Other then when I was young and my first car I have always prefered bumpers.
My taste in vehicles is varied but I tend to like big for the leg room due to duff left leg .
The old 240 Volvo bumpers are amazing.
I had a Saab 95 (the estate version for the 96) and when checking headlight alignment against my garage door I reversed back straight knocking down part of my sandstone wall. Not a scratch on the Saab - and they wall was never rebuilt.
In Spain I'd stopped to blow up the tyres on a car transporter I was towing with my old 1970 SIIa Land Rover when a Swiss plonker reversed out of a parking space too fast and straight into the front of the stationary Land Rover. Result one written off XR4i with broken back and a slight scuff on galv finish of Landie.
I'm also a lover of towbars (not literary ) and all my cars inlcuding the Minor have them due to me often using a trailer.
When fitting to our familly car (Neon) I removed the plastic outer cover to find a huge lump of polystyrene and then a steel beam. I'd thought there was just the plastic and didn't realise that there was so much under modern bumpers.

Paul Humphries

The most ridiculous idea I ever heard for modern pedestrian safety was bumper mounted airbags, designed to soften an impact to pedestrians, should you hit them.

I saw a video of them testing this idea. It didnt work. The car hit the 'pedestrian' dummy, "killing" it instantly. The airbags then ignited, catapulting the dummy's carcass a good five feet in the air. Whats more, when the airbags ignited, the whole car resembled a popcorn ball.

How silly is that?!

Perfectly sensible, IMO, if it worked.
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But it didnt.

...and there's no reason why it won't, after development, which the 'crash' in the video was presumably a part of.
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I don't see how it could work unless the bags inflate before the pedestrian has contacted the car.

What, in the same way that airbags inflate before the driver hits the steering wheel?

but in that situation the car has already hit something else...

Normal in-car airbags inflate in the fraction of a second after the car has hit something. Much simpler to detect a collision after it has occurred than to reliably predict one before it happens.

The reasoning being, I imagine, that broken legs are preferable to having you brain spread over the bonnet - can't imagine the bags act only at bumper height
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