Defender not as strong as it seems

Not in the UK but in one of the tunnels in Madeira, a 70 year old mail seriously injured

Landy still looks in a lot better shape than the euro box....just hope the Defender saved the old boy's life....

I recall they did a range rover versus something like a Fiesta size modern car and the Range Rover came off far worse simply due to the fact it didn't have the crush zones so the bulkhead came backwards and sliced through the knees.

Looks like they were both driving on the wrong side of the road!

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kevstar said:

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That's the one......

kevstar said:

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Wow....

Defender in the OP looks in surprisingly good shape.... Hope all goes well for the people. A

kevstar said:

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You wouldn't catch me driving anything made in France........I prefer to avoid hitting things and up to now thats worked for me

Modern vehicles are very strong, simply because they're designed to be. They are also good at absorbing impact energy throughout the whole body shell. This minimises the energy transferred to the occupants inside. So a modern vehicle looks like a complete mess after a hard impact, but it's designed to do that as energy is dissipated.
Something like a Defender or D1/2 has a sturdy chassis to keep the bumpers at the correct ends with all the other components bolted in the middle. However in a serious impact, that same chassis often deflects the impacted vehicle into softer non structural body shell components. This is one reason why the Defender was finally killed off, simply because it couldn't meet the stringent EU crash tests.
In light low speed crashes, the solid chassis vehicle normally suffers little more than cosmetic damage, whereas the modern vehicle is beyond economical repair.