Safety Engineering

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Norm Sippel asks "when Alfa began engineering safety into our beloved cars?"
The marque-chauvinist answer would be 1910, since superior control is the
first line of protection. A more orthodox answer would be with the 105; the
first time Alfa stressed safety in advertising, especially crumple zones and
the rearward mounting of the steering box, was with the 1750. The second
series 1750 dished the steering wheel, which certainly implied an increased
awareness long after the early 105 development.

Until the 1900 was developed and marketed it was a "given" that many if not
most Alfas would be bodied by third parties, which eliminates most of the
avenues of safety development from Alfa's engineering purview. The 1900 and
the Giulietta (virtually a miniature 1900 in chassis layout) and following
101, 102 and 106 cars had crumple-zone amenable layouts, but steering boxes
(with unjointed columns in the basic design, and flat steering wheels) mounted
as far forward as one could get, a classic chest-spear layout. The Alfetta was
a great leap forward in collision-safety thinking, with the jointed and angled
steering column and a front frame design that is particularly amenable to
energy-absorbing folds of the suspension supporting structures. US owners
could point to the protected fuel tank location, but that was a US-market
modification rather than a part of the initial concept.

Any car-safety discussion should give a hat-tip to the Rover 2000, which was
definitely engineered with crumple zones, a highly protective
between-the-zones box, and a between-the-wheels fuel tank, as well as
generally thoughtful and innovative detailed safety-aware design. Norm
mentioned crash-testing; it was reported that a high-ranking Rover engineer,
well fortified with internal antiseptics, crash-tested an early prototype by
launching it from an unremembered hump-back bridge while testing the car's
late-night speed potential on a rural road, and that all occupants walked
away.

In the seventies Alfa did much work on safety (including developing and
patenting the side-airbag head protection, and explosion-proof fuel storage)
but this was only after safety became a popular topic. I don't remember dates
offhand, but someplace in my files have an extensive report on an Alfa safety
research car which was based on an Alfasud, which dates it to the early/mid
seventies.

John H.
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