[HillMan]

Good post Sankar.

Purely shows how the Indian manufacturers take us for a ride.

The bumper designs on compact sedans are purely because of the 4m tax benefit regime.

See EcoSport and Quanto for instance. They have the stepney protruding out of the body. Still enjoy a tax benefit because the bumper is well within the 4m length.

If the Govt. gives tax incentives on FE, I am sure the designers will have more bandwidth to play around and keep cars safer and prettier.

[Elito11]

Originally Posted by udainxs

I second that! The cielo had a very dense grid of plastic behind the outer shell of the bumper, which made it extremely strong. However, on new vehicles I have not seen any such structure.
Like the picture posted before, that seems to have been replaced by a metallic energy absorbing structure which has led to the loss of rigidity of the outer shell. Now a slight bump and the bumper warps completely!

My 2006 Getz also has a strong yet flexible bumper. I remember once i backed into a pillar at a decent speed (while accelerating!) only to find a small bruise on my tail gate. Apparently the bumper had absorbed all the impact and flexed back into place!

The bumper offcourse had a deep mark on where it had absorbed the impact and flexed.

[dreamseller]

I had a very weird situation. I was driving my NHC (City ZX) and a motorcycle guy had stopped his bike in such a way at the signal that his bike's leg guard was touching the left side of the rear bumper near the wheel well (hope I'm able to explain this properly, as I don't have pics of the same). When the light turned green and I started moving, the leg guard got anchored to the bumper and a part of the bumper just tore off like a sheet of paper, but the bike didn't displace an inch due to the bumper coming off on time.

While it pained me to see the rear in such a state, I was glad it came off on time otherwise the stupid commuter would get dragged. Methinks the bumper served it's purpose really well in this case.

[Kappa]

Comparison between the i-gen i20 and the new Elite i20.
The newer model has a slightly shortened bumper !

[zenren]

Originally Posted by Kappa

Comparison between the i-gen i20 and the new Elite i20.
The newer model has a slightly shortened bumper !

Wasn't i20 already at 3995mm? They wouldn't want to overshoot 4m with the bumper.

[Kappa]

Originally Posted by zenren

Wasn't i20 already at 3995mm? They wouldn't want to overshoot 4m with the bumper.

Yes. The i-gen i20 was 3995mm, but sadly the new Elite is 3985mm. Now instead of shortening the car, Hyundai could have given those additional 10mm to the poor bumper !

[a4anurag]

Originally Posted by Kappa

Yes. The i-gen i20 was 3995mm, but sadly the new Elite is 3985mm. Now instead of shortening the car, Hyundai could have given those additional 10mm to the poor bumper!

They are trying to maximise the interior space hence the sacrifice was given by the bumper though it makes the car (internals) more vulnerable but sadly we have no choice.

Anurag.

[zenren]

Wouldn't shorter overhang lead to better turning radius? If these changes help in bring down the turning radius, it might help in our conditions.

[joybhowmik]

Originally Posted by zenren

Wouldn't shorter overhang lead to better turning radius?

Not if the difference is 1 cm. This is a car designer's idea of making something 'look' uber cool.

[Kappa]

Originally Posted by zenren

Wouldn't shorter overhang lead to better turning radius? If these changes help in bring down the turning radius, it might help in our conditions.

No. That 1cm is very negligible. So negligible that it would be okay to not call it as overhang ! So it won't help in reducing the turning radius as such

Originally Posted by joybhowmik

Not if the difference is 1 cm. This is a car designer's idea of making something 'look' uber cool.

But 1 cm doesn't appear much to the eyes as much as it helps in increasing the bumper size and thus the safety.. Its kinda form over function thing !

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[rattanw]

I am recounting my personal experience and my observations on this subject.

On a cold winter morning about 10 years ago I waited at a traffic intersection in my brand new Santro. The time was approx 1 am (ok, I know, deserted roads, dead of the night, why stop. Call it Fate or whatever but I waited). Suddenly I hear a short screeching of tires and a loud bang. My car rolls a few feet forward and comes to a stop. When stationery the car was in neutral with hand brake not deployed. Now I get out to see what happened. The scene left me bewildered. There is a bottle green color Indica with a drink driver behind the wheels that rear ended my car. The guy was old enough to be my grandfather, with an odd smirk on his face, obviously clueless and anyway too drunk to react. Hell he was so drunk that he wasn't even able to stand in one position once he got out with the help of his driver. Anyway, as I was busy explaining to him what he had just done, I couldn't bring myself to look at the rear end of my car as I was still in some bit of shock myself. Finally I gathered enough courage to inspect the damages. I was fully expecting a smashed rear end with glad and plastic pieces on the road. When i looked at it I was pleasantly shocked rather somewhat perplexed to find no major damage at all apart from slight dislodging of bumper and the resultant gap between the tail lights and the bumper. The bumper, tail lights and tail door were all undamaged. Considering the impact, and I can tell with certainty that the impact was very solid, this was nothing short of unbelievable. An Indica is not a light car plus as per my guesstimate his car was doing at least 50 - 60 km/hr when he got the brakes roughly 2 seconds before hitting my car. I checked, and rechecked however couldn't find more damages. Now to my mind this is a result of two factors. First, the bumper itself and the fitment was top notch despite the car being a humble santro. Sadly that's not the case anymore with manufacturers now resorting to every possible trick to cut costs. Second, and I feel this is very important, during the impact my car moved forward a few feet. This helped absorb the impact and spread out the energy which otherwise would have caused much more damage. Had i deployed the hand brake or had my foot on the break pedal i am sure the impact would have been much worse. In fact I do recall reading somewhere that while stationery in a car if the surroundings permit, the wheels should be free to move backward or forward on an impact. Now there are situations where this may not be possible as well as this may not be advisable under certain situations but in my opinion this can be a very crucial factor in stationary cars being hit by moving vehicles.

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[zenren]

Looks like Mahindra saw this thread and decided to go with what the customers want. Look at the rear bumper of the new Scorpio

[RajaTaurus]

Bumpers used to protect. Now, it is used to cover only. Take a look at the rear bumper of my Cedia.

This has taken at least 500 hits in the last 5 years varying from two wheelers, Autos, WagonRs, Honda Citys, Fiestas to name a few. It took the shocks and literally "bumped" those 'attackers' away. Once a Two wheeler got stuck into the bumper about 3/4 feet deep. When we pulled out the wheel, it bounced back to normal as if nothing happened. Made of Rubber plastic and anchored at the right places on the body, the Bumper truly absorbs shocks and "bumps" objects away. 7 Years on, the bumper is in tact.

Most of the cars have Plastic hiding Thermocol as media inside which does not absorb or 'bump' objects hitting them, besides getting permanently deformed. And as well brought out, One hit, you lose tail light(s) and go for Body work on the boot, in addition to replacement of the bumper itself!

Originally Posted by zenren

Wouldn't shorter overhang lead to better turning radius? If these changes help in bring down the turning radius, it might help in our conditions.

Turning Radius is not really affected by overhung. Take a look at my Cedia.


See the overhung and the TR is 4.9 Meters. Turning Radius depends on the angle at which wheel can turn maximum combined with Wheel base length.

[zenren]

Originally Posted by RajaTaurus

Turning Radius is not really affected by overhung. Take a look at my Cedia.

See the overhung and the TR is 4.9 Meters. Turning Radius depends on the angle at which wheel can turn maximum combined with Wheel base length.

Turning radius is essentially the minimum width of the street needed for the car to take a U-turn in a single stroke. There are 2 measurements for turning radius, depending on the type of street they measure against: kerb-to-kerb or wall-to-wall.

Kerb-to-kerb method measures the turning radius of the outer wheel - front left in case of right turn and vice versa for left turn. Here, the front overhang area would go above the kerb without hitting anything and hence would not be counted in.

Wall-to-wall method assumes a street with walls on either side and no kerb. This means the outermost point of the car (the front left corner, typically on the bumper) should not hit the wall. In this case, the overhang would matter in determining the turning radius.

[ajaypjayaraj]

In conjested bumper to bumper city traffic, bumpers do take the hit without much harm on modern day cars I think.

Last week, on a congested road, A Qualis rear ended the Yeti while trying to squeeze between a rick and Yeti. When I felt the shake and heard the sound, I thought there would be considerable damage. But when I got out and looked at it, I could't find a scratch on the bumper, luckily body and tail lamps were untouched and the reflector on the bottom portion of the bumper only cracked. On the other hand, the Qualis had a broken bumper which was hanging and I don't know how he managed to get the right turn signal light too popped out and hanging. I was surprised to see the front end of Qualis when the bang din't even scratch Yeti's bumper. Qualis would have just fibre glass bumpers which were not designed to take slow speed impacts as it is a very old design. But the new generation car which is the Yeti here did survive the impact. Only the reflector needs replacement.

Since this happened to my car just few days back, I would not really call the bumper to be useless atleast in new generation cars which can survive such small impacts which are frequent in congested city traffic. Ofcourse they wont survive any hard impact to protect the car but aren't they designed to collapse and absorb impacts rather than stay strong and pass on the impact to the rest of the car? and also to protect pedestrians?

If we look at it as "do not protect the car anymore" I think we are shifting the focus on to a different "use" compared to what the designers might have had in mind. I think it just serves a different purpose (which would be its actual use) as per what the designers intended, rather than protect the car like a crash guard.