Rover actually intended the metro to stay in production until the new mini came out, they only withdrew it at the end of 1997 because of its dismal crash test the car wouldn't sell anymore
A brand which was taking every profit to it's own chairmans trying to put on sale an already outdated car when the competition was about 1 gen ahead at least. Paint me not surprised.
This is why government regulation and oversight WORKS. Car manufacturers simply wouldn't have built cars to the safety standards we enjoy today if they were not forced to by the authorities.
True, some aspects of life require some sort of authority to exist to guide them in doing business in a mutually beneficial way. Others, such as career choices, let us be.
All Rover did was refresh the Metro body and interior to give it a much better look and improve the driving position (the old one felt like you were driving a bus), but for all that, they still used a, rather elderly, late seventies floorpan / chassis, and the shortcomings of such an elderly design and a new body weren't exactly going to give it a glowing EURONCAP crash test result. The result was useless, the body crumpled up like a pop can in the frontal impact test, the footwell / cockpit intrusion into the cabin and rearward pedal travel were pretty horrendous, and as for the driver's airbag, that was pretty useless too - the steering wheel and airbag shot off to the left while the driver's head struck the door pillar on the right. Rover merely did a makeover job to the old girl at the request of their dealers who wanted something cheap to sell, using as little money as possible to build and deliver it and they succeeded then gave it the name, the 100 later on to bring it into line with the 200 400 600 and 800.
That's an absolute sentence telling what it's not the true. Regular cars after 2000 are a little bit safer, but a collision over 120Km/h-70Mp/h can kill you anyway.
I would say that it depends.... A 1999 Mercedes S-class or Volvo S80 is hardly what I would call "unsafe" cars. But some other manufacturers still had a long way to go.
@@mattiasjohansson1727 Of course, both cars you mention have a huge ammount of passive safety systems that prevents or else try to prevent the risk of lethal injuries in an accident. However, despite all those measures, up to certain levels of speed or even in certain kind of colissions in not so higher speeds will end up in a fatal result. In fact, Lady Di and Dodi died in an accident while it's choffer was running up to 80 km/h in that tunnel of Paris trying to evade the papparazzis, and they were exactly in an S 600 of that particular generation.
@@Sammael66685 Safer drivers as well as safer cars make for safer roads. We have to do our bit and take responsibility for our own safety when we drive our cars. Not be overly reliant on airbags, crumple zones, lane keep assist, etc.
