[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by LWJ

Question. I am making this decision currently. I do like the 240 volvos but only the last few years had ABS. I can't determine about an airbag. I have made these two technologies a priority. What are your thoughts on this?

Larry

Do a search on YouTube for a 5th Gear test where they compared a late 1980s boxy tank Volvo to a modern European city car in a frontal collision. It does a great job of illustrating how far crash safety engineering and crumple zones have come. The older Volvos were tanks, but here's the problem - that dynamic energy has to go somewhere. Modern cars are designed to crumple which absorbs the energy and protects the driver. Stiff "tank" like cars, which were designed without crumple zones, simply expect the rapid deceleration to be absorbed by the soft squishy people inside. People who think the 1980s Volvo was the pinnacle of crash safety do not have a good fundamental understanding of physics.