1975 Electra AIRBAG!

[Guest BJM]

[Guest BJM]

Logged onto AACA and saw a photo of a nice 75 (or 76) Electra off the right, clicked on it, looked at some of the photos and spotted this. Heard about these, but have never seen one.

[Guest palosfv3]

Interesting thing about SRS systems is that GM / Oldsmobile produced a number ( cant remember if it was 100 or 500 ) of air bag equipped test cars in 1953. In the early eighties they found one of these cars in a barn in Nevada . They cleaned off the chicken manure got it running and test crashed it to see if the system still worked . This was just about the time that SRS systems were mandated by the Feds. I first saw this film at an I-Car traing class in the late 1980's . I believe they still use this early test film in their SRS instruction classes .

[NTX5467]

I have a service manual for the '75 GM airbag system. I rescued it from a pile of manuals/books which was being cleaned out of a local dealership, plus a GMC truck parts catalog.

Seems like those '70s airbag cars were "given" to the insurance companies for their fleet cars, "for evaluation". Possibly as some sort of "program" situation, after which GM got them back and disposed of them in one way or another? I'm not sure how many actually went through the dealer network, though. Can't really see Electras as insurance company "company cars", but LeSabres and Delta88s could be. Seems like the production was equally split between Olds and Buick, though.

Great picture!

Enjoy!

NTX5467

[Guest 75RivGS]

ACRS was more or less covered in a couple of other threads (http://forums.aaca.org/f177/74-factory-air-bag-267351.html)

Would love to own such a piece of car history.

[Guest BigDogDaddy]

I had not heard the story of any 1953 cars with airbags, but that same story circulated about a '76 Chevy Impala being found in a junkyard or barn and GM bought it and test crashed to see if it would work as intended, and it did. At least that is the version that I heard.