The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) commemorated its 50th anniversary and impact on automotive safety with car-nage. Highlighting the progress made in occupant production over the past five decades, IIHS faced off a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu against a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air in a frontal offset crash test. While this battle of the ages has made the YouTube rounds, and even appeared in the Consumer Reports Cars blog, we are revisiting the classic versus modern clash in a special “director’s cut.”
 
This video expands on the original footage with more angles, and we added a voice-over commentary highlighting the performance of the sedans.
 
If this whets your appetite for crumpled sheetmetal, view more than 300 crash tests performed by the IIHS in our crash test video player. To aid with vehicle research, you’ll also find crash tests within our model overview pages, within the Photos/Videos tab.

Learn more about the IIHS 50th anniversary.

—Jeff Bartlett