[alfa] Alfa cars crashworthiness

["Gwynne W. Spencer" <gwynnes1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re the Alfa 147 crash discussion. In November of 1963 I was riding in my 
'59 Giulietta Sprint (with a friend driving) in the Santa Cruz mountains 
(The Old Soquel Rd. - for those that know the area) when he made a mistake 
and went off the road into what he thought was a field with small trees. 
This was at night and what he thought were small trees, were actually the 
tops of 120' redwoods. When we left the road at about 60 MPH, we rolled 
right and landed on the roof of the car. Since the road was approaching an 
intersection with Summit rd. the area beside the road curved to the right, 
sort of bowl shaped  The bank we landed on was also curved; centrifugal 
force held us up on the banking as we tore along decelerating from 60 until 
we hit a tree near the top. This greatly reduced our speed causing the car 
to "fall off" the banking and roll a number of times - I think it was 6 or 
7. At the bottom was a stream bed that passed under the road and had 
concrete sides that acted as a sluice to direct flow under the road. The 
car went off the concrete and did a sort of "half gainor" (Sp?) landing on 
it's wheels in the stream which at the time was only a few inches deep. We 
were strapped in by lap belts only (at the time, 3 point belts were not 
commonly available. the car was bashed in on every panel and all the glass 
was either shattered or hanging off the car (rear vents). the spare wheel / 
tire was found about 100 ft from the car, the battery was torn out of it's 
mount in the trunk and a rag I kept under my seat for windshield cleaning 
was found hanging in the branches of a tree. We both walked away - friend 
with a very nasty bruise on his leg where it hit the underside of the dash, 
me with a small bruise and cut on the side of my forehead and a small cut 
on the back of my hand. The roof was shifted partly to one side and was 
caved slightly but stayed up in place. It looks like the "A" pillars were a 
box section that went all the way from the front of the car to the base of 
the rear windscreen and acted like longitudinal roll bars.  I replaced the 
Giulietta Sprint with Giulia Sprint GT based on the strength of the Giulietta.

Gwynne Spencer
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