Viral photos are going around showing a Michigan crash involving a modern Kia Rio and a 1973 Chrysler New Yorker. The Rio is completely smashed up, while the New Yorker looks almost perfectly fine. “They don’t make ’em like they used to” is what a police officer allegedly told the classic car driver. But is that Chrysler New Yorker’s bumper really that strong and is that 2015-ish Kia’s front-end really that flimsy? Here’s the real story.
The full story comes to us from the owner of the Chrysler New Yorker, Markku Jaakkola, who runs the Detroit’s Unforgotten Wheels Instagram page and blog.
It all began with his post on Facebook, shown below:
“So, how’s your day going ? I was just driving home from company picnic…Cop said ‘they don’t make them like they used to..’ when he saw the ‘damage’ on my 1973 Chrysler New Yorker: the license plate fell off,” reads the post, which includes the photos of the battered Kia and remarkably intact Chrysler.
Pretty much the entire internet shared this post, with many rightly criticizing modern cars for having useless bumpers, and many others rightly criticizing old cars for having poor crash performance (i.e. a lack of a crumple zone, and therefore a high impulse, which is dangerous for humans and in this case would cause severe whiplash).
Jaakkola posted a follow-up:
“Couple additional photos of today’s accident with my 1973 Chrysler New Yorker (my license plate fell off),” the follow-up reads, showing the mangled license plate, but the otherwise beautiful rear bumper.
But is the Chrysler New Yorker — which shares its C-Body platform with the Demolition Derby champion, the Chrysler Imperial — really that tough so that its rear bumper could demolish the entire front end of a Kia Rio without sustaining a scratch? The answer is no.
Jaakkola, a car-loving Finn who lives in metro Detroit, chatted with me over the phone about what happened.
“I was coming back from a company picnic; I took Dequindre [road] northbound, and I was driving north, and I saw this girl [in the Kia] coming from the middle lane towards me… and the next thing I know I felt a huge bump in the rear,” he told me, “then I saw a Chevy pickup truck kinda like bouncing around next to me on the right side, so after everything stopped I went outside kinda anxious to see what I was gonna find behind me, because it was completely crashed, but the girl was OK.”
“Then the Chevy pickup guy came over there, and he said [the Kia driver] hit him while he was driving the same direction that I was,” Markku explained, saying the Kia driver was trying to turn left behind him in the old Chrysler. “The truck guy, he spun around a couple times, hit a Ford Fusion that was maybe three or four cars in front of me, then he drove his car to a driveway that was on the right side of the street.”
This left just Markku’s 1973 Chrysler New Yorker and the Kia Rio in the street, so that’s when Markku took the photo. “I would think the truck hit her on the left side [front], and she hit me on her car’s right side [front],” Markku went on.
“I just posted it [to Facebook] like, so here’s my day, how’s your day going. I wasn’t thinking anything else about it,” he told me over the phone. “People are starting to fight over if the new cars are better than the old ones or vice versa…People are claiming that I never was really part of the collision.”
When I asked Markku why he thought his post resonated with so many people, he replied: “I think because it’s kinda unique that an old car would be in a crash, especially somebody taking a photo of it…basically nothigng happened…because there are a lot of people interested in classic cars…especially a lot of older people.”
Markku’s post has received quite a bit of criticism from skeptics who understandably believed Markku was implying only his car and the Kia were involved in the crash, with one Reddit post titled “Chrysler guy is lying” garnering over 36,000 comments as of this writing.
When pressed about whether he understood why his initial post made many think it was just his car and the Kia involved in the crash, he told me yes. “Yeah I get that, and I didn’t really put any comments on what actually happened, any details, so it’s easy to assume that the Kia hit me…I didn’t really include any details.”
In response to folks who are claiming he backed up to the crashed kia, Markku texted me: “I’d like to know if they really think that I would back up my car there while police is parked behind us and intervene on his investigation to get a photo for social media.”
Markku finished by telling me his thoughts on the old car vs. new car-in-a-crash thing. “Of course [the old car is] made out of thicker steel, but if you’re going to be in a high-speed accident I’d rather be in a new car.”
Also.. it sucks when you have significant vehicle damage, but crumple zones are there for a reason. There are plenty of people who died in older land yachts with rigid structures and no way to control the severe deceleration of an impact.
<insert that IIHS video of a 2000s Malibu vs ’50s Bel Air here>
As much as I love old cars… I wouldn’t want to be in a crash in one. Cars are replaceable, people aren’t.
I dunno, it’s believable. My ’91 Suburban suffered no damage when a PT Cruiser rear-ended me about 10 years back. The PT was totaled.
Now this is the kind of investigative journalism the internet needs. Glad you got ahold of the owner, though with a car that cool I’m surprised that they’re surprised that the internet is going crazy over it 😛
The more interesting takeaway is that, the ‘sub-compact’ Kia Rio, looks to have roughly the same cabin size as the ‘full size’ Chrysler.