During the very early 1970s, Volkswagen developed an Experimental Safety Vehicle, a project initiated by the US Department of Transportation. The prototype car was developed to meet the requirements of the West German Department of Transport which were similar. The following pages were scanned from a brochure produced by VWoA in 1972. Click on the pages below for a larger sized image that you can read – but be warned – they are quite large!
As you can see from the introduction on page 1, much of the crashworthiness and other safety features we take for granted nowadays were developed by this and similar projects, although some of the ideas shown here did not make it into general production.
Published 1st May 2008 © J S Rastall.