Over the weekend, AutotopiaLA released a video detailing the severe crash that Shawn Davis went through as a passenger in the now infamous 1300 horsepower Mercury Comet last December. Our coverage of the story was inundated with comments, but that’s nothing compared to the thousands they received.
We presume a fair number of their comments were negative, just like ours, and today the whole team got together to do a live Q&A on YouTube, addressing some of these issues. Right off the bat, I’d like to point out that Shawn has never shown anger towards Russ, the owner, and builder of the muscle car.
The frontman of the Autotopia channel is actually trying to make this into a constructive moment where the entire muscle car and custom community takes another look at safety. These are old cars, mostly without airbags or crumple zones, and this crash may motivate the industry to focus on preventing serious injuries.
After the initial video was released, a few professional builders talked to Shawn, and a few ideas emerged. What could Russ, the driver, have done differently in the moments before the crash? It’s been suggested that shutting off the engine but leaving it in gear would have helped. It clearly wouldn’t have stopped the car, but that huge 10.35-liter V8 would indeed have created enough friction to reduce overall speed by a couple of miles per hour.
Is the minivan driver okay?
That could have reduced the damage to the minivan as well. Speaking of which, one of the comments received here on CarVibz was critical of us not mentioning the safety of the minivan driver. And the reason for that was simple: we just didn’t know, but now we do.
Apparently, there was only one person in the Honda Odyssey, the driver, and he was mostly fine other than a scar. Of course, whiplash from being rear-ended is a pretty serious thing. Thankfully, the modern minivan has crumple zones and good headrests, not to mention a dashboard that isn’t made out of metal like the custom 1964 Mercury Comet.
Under California insurance law, the team was unable to get contact information for the minivan driver. So all we know is he was okay in the immediate aftermath of the crash. The Mercury owner’s insurance did fully cover the damages to all the Honda minivan and medical expenses.
Seatbelts are really important
We talked about what caused the brakes to fail in the previous video. Obviously, the take-away is that you should drive a car where you have to constantly ride the brakes. But beyond that, the whole custom car world is now learning two valuable lessons.
The first one is that seatbelts are crucial. Many old muscle cars are equipped with lap belts. Those could be considered unsafe in a 200-300 horsepower car from the 1970s. But they’re downright dangerous if you’ve built something with over 1000 hp.
The Mercury was equipped with a full racing harness, but neither Shawn nor Russ were wearing it because this was just a short drive at or near the speed limit. But as it turns out, crashing at just 45 miles per hour can still do a lot of damage to the human body and put you in the hospital.
Shown notes one interesting workaround to the seatbelt problem, this 1967 Camaro which has an interior swap with 2007 Pontiac GTO seats, including the 3-point seatbelts.
You need a handbrake
Nobody wants an ugly handbrake stick in their $200,000 restomod, but this incident highlights the need for a secondary way to stop the car in case of an emergency. Again, Autotopia talked to many people about this, and the builder of the Ruffian Ford GT40 said his e-brake was difficult to install. Totally worth it, though, if you think about it!
Beyond that, this Q&A is a nice behind-the-scenes, where we get to see the Autotopia team for the first time. We also learn that Shawn was in a band up until only a few years ago and he’s hardcore into sports bikes, for example.
The bad news is the channel wants to change the way it shoots videos in the future. The beauty shots are staying, but burnouts and hard acceleration on public roads will gradually disappear.
