In a message dated 4/7/02 11:31:43 AM, wolzphoto@WORLDNET.ATT.NET writes:

<< Tain't necessarily so.  The van's front end is hell-for-stout; much more so
than a big-assed F**d truck's.  Course, you don't have as much crush
distance as you would in a conventional layout, either.  Don't sell them
short, though; the V'gon's a pretty tough nut to crack.

Karl Wolz >>

Gentlemen (and ladies too),

The Vanagon has been built like a tank in the front, but also includes crush
zone technology. No need to speculate on how it was designed. Alistair Bell
and I have provided you with the original crash test and development work for
the Vanagon in the VAG technical paper on the subject. Of course, the article
is in German (good time to learn babelfish)  but the figures and pictures are
multilingual.

The website url: http://homepage.mac.com/alistairbell/home/index.html

Frank Grunthaner