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MG MGF Technical - How safe is an MGF?

At 4 am yesterday morning I was driving my mum's diesel fiesta to the airport using airport transfers tunbridge wells (giving 2 people and loads of luggage a lift there so the F was not up to the job) - one lot of black ice and one stone wall later and I've written the car off, but luckily I walked away with a split eye, a cracked head, a sore knee and much hurt to my pride. The airbag saved me from serious injury, or even death judging by the comments the police made when they'd examined the state of the car. Now having been under and behind my F doing modifications and repairs (e.g. replacing the resistor pack for my heater/blower - what crap build quality) I'm wondering how safe the F really is. It's just plastic and sheet metal from where I'm looking and, put it this way, I'm not sure I'd be walking out of the crash I had yesterday if I'd been in my F. The diesel fiesta may be a tank but at least a tank is armour plated. So someone please reassure me as to the safety record of the MGF or I can see myself tootling around doing the speed limit...
J Daniel

Any car is only as safe as the person behind the wheel. The F is good in crash situation as various contributors to the BBS will testify.

John.
JFK

The MGF is as safe as its driver.

If you "tootle around doing the speed limit" you should feel as confident as you would in any other vehicle.

If not, then hey, it's up to you!

Sam
Sam Murray

Jim, i am no saftey expert but if you want a testimonial to the cars build quality have a look at the thread entitled "oh for the love of a car" on the MGF General page.

Nik
n stretton

I think their is a natural tendency when you have survived a crash to thank the car!

However suggesting that a Fester is armour plated is a tad too generous. If it is one of the old ones then I seem to remember that it was not highly rated in the various crash tests.

I have been inhabiting this board for some time and seen lots of people report terrible crashes (including Dieter and Gareth!) and cannot remember anyone saying anything other than they walked away unhurt. Even with your airbag deploying it would appear the car did it's best to damage you with knee and head injuries which in turn sounds like the passenger safety cell did not work that well and that you were very close to serious injury.

I hope you learned something about safe driving from your dice with death!

Cheers

Patrick
Patrick Beet

<<It's just plastic and sheet metal from where I'm looking>>

It's not the plastic trim, or infact the body panels that are going to save you in a crash.

Try looking at the chassis, sub-frame and impact protection bars in the F.
You'll probably find these far more substantial in the F.

I had quite a nasty crash in the F last year, and suffered no injuries at all.

Also the fact the F has what amounts to a 4 foot crumple zone at the front would help if you have any more impulses to drive in to brick walls.

Sounds like you've had a lucky escape.

paul weatherill

J D, youv'e not mentioned how fast were you going, approx, Dave.
DC MORRIS

JD

Testimonial---I rolled my first F after hitting a sheet of Black Ice last year. In common with a lot of BBS contributors, I walked away without a scratch. The woman who was traveling behind me ended up with more shock than I did- she thought I was going to be a mess when she got to me!!!!
Kevin

Rolling the MGF. One of the main things I am worried about! I know the windscreen surround is meant to act as the roll bar but I can't help feeling that if you drew a straight line from the top of the windscreen to the boot of the car my head would be above it! I personally don't fancy the idea of balencing an upside MGF on my bonce!
R Baker

"Any car is only as safe as the driver" - fair enough, but you can't legislate for black ice or other drivers hitting you so I was just worried about the MGF and it's safety record; it just seems a bit flimsy.

Kevin and RB - rolling the F and scalping yourself is a big worry of both mine and my best mate, who also has an F.

James
J Daniel


After the activity day at North Weald i have come to the conclusion it must be really hard to roll and F unless you hit something like a curb etc... I span a number of times doing around 75/80 and felt as safe as houses...

I also had an accident in france this year. A frenchwomen slammed into my driver side resulting in the whole side needing replacing,, It was clear to see that the side impact bars done the trick !!

The car looked awful but it was still driveable so we continued our touring holiday !!

I'm not sure if this would of been the case in my old vauxhall cavalier !! (boring but practical)

Safe driving everyone ! assume the driver in front is a dickhead and you cant go wrong !!!

STU



Stu

Dieter and Gareth Hughes (to mention just two) have been unfortunate enough to 'flip' their *F*s at high speed - Dieter did it on a German Autobahn, and they don't hang around on the Autobahns - and both of them walked away from the cars without any serious injuries and in both cases the windscreen frame did not collapse even though both cars were written off.

And having seen the photos I am very, very confident in the 'protection' offered by the MGF.

Whilst I am sure that a German Panzer will give even better protection I am not duly concerned as far as the *F* goes.

Ted
Ted Newman

>>>>Try looking at the chassis, sub-frame and impact protection bars in the F. You'll probably find these far more substantial in the F.

This is, I think, the key. The panels on the F are, as I have found to my cost, very easy to damage beyond repair. However, 'what lies beneath' is pretty strong, considering how it shrugged off the wallop I gave it. Also, the seats are a long way from the front and the back of the car, which fills me with crumple-zone confidence. We have heard a few stories of people surviving rolling their F - although of course wearing a seatbelt is probably a good idea...

Still not sure about having the petrol tank right behind my back tho'...
David Bainbridge

I used to work at Mira and they have whats called a kinematic and compliance rig. What they do is bolt the vehicle down using the sills and then move the wheels up and down against the suspension and monitor the wheels angles, such as camber, castor etc thru the range of suspension travel. As you can imagine this puts quite a large amount of stress into the body shell. The guy that runs the rig remembered when they put a boxster on it the gaps in the body panels were increasing all the time. The F however did not show any evidence of this!
R Baker

J Daniel,

Glad to here you are okay and all that. A number of people here have had accidents to varying degrees of damage and even one recently was reported by Ralph from Scotland who had a very serious accident in his F. I believe it involved the car rolling several times and although Ralph did sustain smoe severe injuries he did fortunately live to tell the tale.

I also have some pictures on my website of an F that someone rolling into a field....

"Crash Test Dummy" in the articles section...

http://www.dotcomoff.demon.co.uk
Paul Lathwell

Posted this before but might be helpful;

"The car (mgtf, but F and Zed's are similar) is stripped and is structurally undamaged; so very good news. Fascinating to see car without its 'clothes' on. I've done some mech. / structures Eng. and they've been very clever with the crash / crumple zones. What was designed to give did, so the stiffer structural parts didn't, (chassis / subframes / suspension mounts). The former easy to replace, the latter probably will write a car off. The front of the car is constructed on two longitudinal rails (chassis / subframes) the under bonnet space is like a bathtub sitting on these rails. The top of the tub holds the suspension turrets. Bolt on deformable panels; wings and front bumper/nose effectively protect each side of the tub. Between the nose and the tub is a progressively deformable box section, actually two sitting in front of each other.

The way the car is designed it appears, not surprisingly to be in three concentric zones. True of the back of the car as well as the front. The outer one, deformable panels supported by deformable boxes; low speed protection to car. The middle bit, progressive compression of the bonnet/boot space, it is obvious the tub and chassis material thickens in the box section gets bigger the closer to the passenger compartment; middle / high-speed impacts will compress all but the passenger compartment protecting people. The inner zone the passenger compartment contains all the bits to keep people inside and in place, seats, belts, SPS etc. If anything intrudes into this you're seriously hurt anyway and probably difficult to balance protection with weight but from a quick look I like the way MGR have constructed the car. Or at least an FEA computer has. Looks like they've done their crash homework!"

Ian Walker

Hi,
Erik has collected some of the accidents.
http://www.mgtf.be/ >>> Special >>> crasshed MGF
Mine was the BRG coloured in fourth row.
When you click on the individual pictures then a new window with pix collection comes up.
Gareth bad *Rock and Roll* is on Paul Lathwells site.

Yes, we walked away and bought another MGF beeing sure that the car is rock solid. The driver unfortunately is another question.

Mind you on the terrible accident happened to Ralf from Scotland in July. He had not the luck we had :(

Archive: Thread: I crashed my MGF, (and I mean really crashed)
---- cut-------
July 29th 9.00am I hit a huge puddle of water on the dual carriageway at about 65mph and went into a massive aquaplane. When the MG hit the drier tarmac it flipped once, rolled three times, hit (and halved) a lamppost, rolled again them came to rest on the passengers side.

The lamppost caved in the driver’s door trapping my right leg between door and steering wheel. The roof was ripped off and I was left hanging from my leg. I pulled my leg free, which then bent just below the knee as I tumbled out onto the verge, passing out with the pain. The car is a write off.

I was blue lighted to hospital with…
A smashed right leg
Badly fractured left leg
Fractured shoulder
Bruised heart
Big gash on forehead
--- cut end-----

Take care !!! Drive secure !!
Dieter
Dieter K.

I have the "unfortunate" honour of being able to contribute to this thread after today.

I was on my way to Settle in North Yorks to meet up with some of the Northern Owners for our last meeting of the year, and was doing around 50 on a road with the National Speed Limit (60 mph). I wasn't pushing it, as I was early for the meet.

I came round a long, sweeping, right hand bend, when unexpectedly, on the exit of the bend, the back end kicked out to the left. From the way it suddenly went under moderate steering input and at a speed well within the limit, I am guessing that there was a patch of diesel or something similar on the road.

I managed to hold it and almost corrected the slide, when the back end whipped round to the right, and put me facing left, at 90 degrees to the direction of the road, sliding along. I thought I had got away with it, and would just slide to a halt, but instead went nose-first into a very big, solid stone wall, which impact spun the F through 180 degrees before it came to rest.

The airbag deployed. The front end of car is a real mess - Sort of flattened by the perpendicular sliding impact into the wall, and the passenger door won't open, having been shunted back a bit.

However, I fortunately walked away without a scratch (except possibly a bruise from the seatbelt, and what I think are friction burns to my hands from the airbag deploying).

Touch and go whether the car is repairable or not. A lot will depend on the damage "under the skin" as per David B's comments above.

Obviously I'm gutted as I've only had the car back for about a month from when it was stolen. However, I can only report good things about the F's strength and safety as result. A fellow F driver and sometime contributor to this and other forums, who stopped to help on the way to the meet, was surprised that I hadn't been more badly hurt from the look of the front end of the car, so I guess it did what it was designed to do.

Diggers
Diggers

Diggers

Sorry to hear your tale of woe BUT very pleased to hear that yet again the car looked after its driver.

Hope that the matter is sorted well.

Ted
Ted Newman

Thanks Ted. Once again it's in the hands of the insurers. :(

If they write her off, at least I'll know we had a good final drive, top down, heater on full, proper MG-style, and she looked after me at the crucial moment.

It's a timely reminder for all F drivers to watch out for that back end on these greasy winter roads though. I see someone has posted about the surface conditions elsewhere on the bbs too.

Diggers
Diggers

There is some very good independant safety related test results coming out in the next few weeks that will put the MGTF, and by inference the MGF is a very good light.

Rog
Roger Parker

This thread was discussed between 06/12/2002 and 11/12/2002

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