Crash testing Archives

Video: Saab 9-5 SportCombi crash test

There’s nothing at Saab that’s treated more seriously than the safety of our customers. It’s one of our core values and part of the Swedish philosophy that’s incorporated into every car that we design and build.

Our next vehicle release is the much awaited Saab 9-5 SportCombi and earlier this week (not even two days ago as I write this), Saab did a frontal offset crash test on the 9-5 SportCombi. The test was done at 65km/h and was performed to EuroNCAP standards, with four ‘occupants’ in the car.

I was fortunate enough to get along to the crash lab and record this video of the test. Many of you might have seen videos from the IIHS or EuroNCAP before, which tend to be slo-mo and soundless. This video doesn’t have the same angle they use because there are safety concerns governing where I could stand with the video camera, but it’s 100% live and you’ll get the same visual and aural experience that I had.

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Note the intact cabin and A-pillar in the post-crash photos because the front of the car absorbed the impact. All airbags deployed as they should have to protect our valuable passengers. One detail that I found interesting….. if you look closely at the still shots, you’ll see that even the turn signals on the mirrors are still working.

We’ll have some more video in the next few weeks showing you some more background material from the crash lab and how various aspects of it work. It’s very interesting and impressive stuff and I’m looking forward to sharing it here on Inside Saab.

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Skaters invade Saab for commercial shoot

This is nothing car related, but it’s interesting just to see the other things go on here from time to time.

If I asked you to guess the names of guys you’d find in the crash test building here at Saab, you’d probably answer Anders, or Fredrik, or similar names. Yesterday was a little different as the building was full of guys names Wes, Tyler, Brandon and the like.

Swedish online skating retailers Junkyard hired the Saab crash test facility to film an advertisement yesterday. It’s my understanding that the campaign will be online, at the least, and maybe for television here in Sweden as well. The company used a crew of skaters from the United States, who have been touring around Europe for competitions in recent months.

So why use the Saab crash test facility?

If you look at the photo above, you’ll see the guys are standing on the edge of a big pane of glass. Underneath that glass (which is around 10cm thick and optical quality in clarity) is a room with a high speed camera in it.

Here’s a look to the room down below…..

The high speed camera is on the tripod. It’s pretty small, but very powerful. It records 1,000 frames per second and each of those frames is around 3 megabytes in size, so the 2.6 seconds of time taken to record a stunt by one of the skaters takes a fair bit longer than 2.6 seconds to download on to the computer.

Above the glass is a bank of lights, so everything was completely lit up when Wes did the jump shown below…..

And here’s how it looks from down where the camera is…..

It’ll be more effective in super slo-mo, I’m sure, but you get the picture.

It’s an unusual use for Saab’s crash test facility, but an enjoyable one. The guys were all great and had a lot of fun recording the spot. We’ll keep an eye out for the film version when it comes online and post it as a follow up to this story.

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Saab crash testing – old school style

I was up at the Saab Technical Center yesterday, gathering some material for a post that will appear here on Inside Saab next week, when I saw these fantastic old black and whites showing some Saab crash testing conducted back in the late 1960s.

Saab’s crast test facility here in Trollhattan is now a very high-tech affair, having been completely refurbished just a few years ago. I’m hoping to visit there in the next few days as they’ll be conducting some tests that I hope to share here on site (no promises, now, but fingers crossed).

As you can see from these photos, the crash test facilities of the 1960’s were somewhat more spartan and weather dependent.

Enjoy.