Same collision, same model, just three decades apart—in the old one, you die, while in the modern car, you walk away with bruises
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If you’re of a certain age, you might recall Volkswagen’s Golf Mk II, the German automaker’s popular compact built and sold in the 1980s, the one that, more or less, made the “Golf” name famous. Well, a German firm recently crash-tested one of these older hatchbacks, and then, just because it was curious, compared the results with the Euro NCAP testing of a current Golf (specifically a Mk VIII, introduced in 2019 and withdrawn from the North in 2022). The goal, as you can no doubt ascertain, was to assess the progress made in vehicle safety over the past 35 years.
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It’ll be of no surprise to anyone that the outcome made for some rather dramatic — nay, traumatic — testimony to the fact that, if you drive an older beater, you might want to reconsider your priorities.
Indeed, although both crash tests simulated a head-on collision between two vehicles travelling at “only” 50 kilometres an hour, the results were like day and night. “Such an accident would have been almost impossible for the occupants of the Golf II to survive,” sums up Markus Egelhaaf of the Dekra Accident Research department, “whereas, in the Golf VIII, only minor injuries such as bruises would have been expected.”
The test, and its results, feel reminiscent of a famous collision staged between two Chevrolets, a 1959 Bel Air and a 2009 Malibu. That crash, coordinated by the American Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), also handily demonstrated the evolution of automotive safety over a half-century.
Then again, a sedan dating back to the 1950s like that is not all too common on today’s roads, and everyone (including the people who drive them) know those sorts of cars are ages away from the airbag-equipped ABS’d semi-autonomous vehicles of today. Comparatively, some vehicles manufactured in the 1980s, like that Golf, still show up on our streets today.
This latest crash-test was conducted by Dekra, a Germany-based independent expert in testing, inspection, and certification. And the second-gen Golf in the video — specifically, a 1989 — was put through one of the most gruesome tests developed by road-safety authorities: the offset frontal collision.
With two occupants — dummies, of course — seated in the front seats, the compact car is launched against a deformable barrier with only the half of the front (the driver’s side) positioned to absorb the impact. “Absorbing” is probably too strong a word, here. The engine sunk so far into the passenger compartment that, had emergency services been called to extricate the driver, they wouldn’t have been able to use the “Jaws of Life,” who wouldn’t have survived the crash anyway. Look at the video in slow-motion and it looks like the incident would have literally knocked his head off. Even on the passenger side, the chances of survival would have been slim.
Conversely, a crash test of the latest-generation Volkswagen Golf, conducted by the European Euro NCAP, convincingly demonstrates the significant advances of the last 35 years in active and passive safety, driver assistance, high-tech materials, and modern manufacturing technologies. On board this latest Golf heir, passengers would have escaped the same crash scenario with minor injuries—perhaps just a few bruises and scrapes to the driver’s right leg and chest and the front passenger’s left leg, per Euro NCAP analysis. Even passengers in the back would be more scared than hurt.
If that’s not enough to convince those who still drive their vieille minoune to perhaps consider trading up into something new, Dekra evaluated the 2025 Golf’s ESP stability systems via a double-lane-change test to simulate a sudden evasive manoeuvre around an obstacle. The maximum speed at which a professional test driver could safely perform the test with the Golf MK II was 65 km/h, but at that speed, the classic car dipped deeply on the outside of the curve at the front, causing the inner rear wheel to lose contact with the asphalt. By contrast, its modern successor kept all four wheels firmly on the ground, even at 75 km/h.
Dekra tested braking performance, too, across a range of speeds and surfaces, with the older Golf typically saddled by braking distances 30% longer than the new car’s, on average. When driving at 60 km/h on wet pavement, for example, the new Golf was able to stop after 85.4 meters, at which point the old model was still travelling at 33 km/h. At 100 km/h on a dry highway, the former came to a complete stop after 42.6 meters, while the latter was still travelling at 56 km/h. So, yeah, while ’80s cars make fun weekend toys, you might want to look at replacing that Mk II daily driver with something fresher.
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