Side Crash Protection

Taken to the MAX for your protection. As you can see in the above photo we have designed the door beams the opposite of anyone else. The door beams are actually the doors, hinged & latched directly to the frame. The fiberglass inside panel of the door is laminated to the door beam & then the outside fiberglass panel is laminated to the inside panel / door beam. The only function of the fiberglass part of the door is to make the door beams look like a door should look. We use 3200 lb. test door lathes and 1/2" x 1" solid steel in our door hinges. This design also means that the door will not be forced into the cockpit in the event of a side impact accident.

Crash Test 08/89

These pictures show you the benefits of having the safety features West Coast offers.

Direct Hit to the Door at 30-35 mph

This accident happened when leaving the city center after doing some cruising. He was taking his wife to a nice restaurant for a romantic dinner then all of a sudden a car (to his right) pulled out of a driveway right out in front of him. Everything happened so fast.

To avoid hitting the another car broadside that pulled out of a driveway right in front of him, the driver chose to steer to the right to go behind the car pulling out rather than just hit the brakes and skid into him broadside. There was plenty of room between the edge of the road and any buildings. It meant turning towards the curb to go behind this car. When the Cobra hit the curb that was 6" high, it got a little airborne and the driver had no more steering control so had to sit there and watch the light pole coming straight for him. He was doing 30 - 35 mph when this happened, did not use the brakes, jumped the curb to miss the accident, slid sideways after hitting the curb and took a direst hit on the drivers door. The car hit so hard it sheered the light pole right off.

The driver knew what was going to happen at the last second so he turned towards his passenger (his wife) and used his arms to brace her for the impact. Neither the driver or his wife were even shook up. He was thankful that they were not injured but was not very happy about his car that he called " his baby". He kept thinking to himself, "This could never happen to me because I am a very good driver and never had an accident".

This was still in the city center and many people witnessed this accident so someone called 911 on their cell phone and within minutes (2 blocks away) the fire rescue team, the ambulance and the police showed up but no one was injured. The fire rescue team said that "the light pole should have ended up 14" inside the car". No one could believe that any car could take this much force hitting a light pole and receive this little damage let alone both driver and passenger not even being shook up.

The police had witnesses but no charges were laid to the other driver because no contact was made with the other car. It took the Police 30 minutes to write up the accident report and could not believe the Cobra was fit to drive until it was fired up and driven away. All he did was put all his weight on the side pipe to bend it back down and it was ready to drive again.

They actually drove this car to the restaurant they were headed to and arrived there 55 minutes after the accident happened.

This accident alone made it all worth while that we put so much thought into the safety of our cars. After producing these cars for over 30 years, no one has ever been taken away in an ambulance and this is what makes us even more thankful for being so safety conscious

More information on Safety in our Chassis Section

This is also the basic frame design for most other Cobra Kit Cars today using either rectangular tubing or round tubing

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