As with any production cars that are driven on public roads, supercars and hypercars are not exempt from being crash tested. Unlike watching any ‘normal’ car be crash-tested however, it brings a tear to your eye to see these gorgeous machines deliberately destroyed.
Car safety testing is carried out by subjecting the vehicle to numerous front, rear and side impacts, both stationary and while moving. The results are recorded by the NHTSA to determine how well it protects occupants in a variety of situations.
These impacts, naturally, cause a huge amount of damage to the test vehicles, with costs easily totaling up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per car in the case of luxury vehicles and supercars.
Usually, manufacturers will use their lower-specification models to carry out the testing in order to save money, so long as they use the same structure as the more luxurious or higher-spec models.
Most expensive cars crash-tested
A perfect example of this is the Porsche Taycan EV (which starts at $103,800) with Porsche choosing to use the ‘base’ 4S model rather than the more expensive ‘Turbo S’ specification which costs upwards of $185,000.
The crash test dummies themselves aren’t exactly cheap either, with the most advanced models coming in at around $150,000. This is due to the state-of-the-art sensors in their bodies that record data such as the shock level and G-forces caused by the crash.
https://youtu.be/D5XFxJmAjoo
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Let’s take the Mercedes SLS AMG as an example of how much crash testing can cost a company. Ranging from $200,000 to a cool $500,000 when new depending on your specification, each time they have to crash test one of these cars that’s at least $200,000 down the drain. Ouch!
You can see in the video above how the long hood works as a fantastic crumple zone, meaning that even in a head-on collision during testing the windshield remained perfectly intact.
One of the most painful cars to see safety tested in the video above is the Koenigsegg Regera, which costs comfortably over $1,000,000.
Koenigsegg are therefore very clever with their testing. Despite destroying the carbon fiber bodyshell with impacts during the assessment, they are able to simply remove the body and reuse the chassis after most tests in order to keep costs down.
- Read more: Which hypercar will TheStradman buy next?
Despite this economical approach to the process, it’s still no less painful seeing this gorgeous hypercar be crashed and smashed in the name of safety.
With plenty of automotive icons featured in the video above such as the Pagani Huayra, McLaren F1 and Bugatti Veyron all being purposefully destroyed, it makes you appreciate just how deep these manufacturers’ pockets must really be.
