Ah Ha ! This is exactly what I will do with our new/old 63. When I was in trade school in the early 80's we had to watch early videos of car crashes and passenger ejections..pre seat belt stuff. As a heavy collision tech I've seen/fixed up some ugly stuff. I'm in w/Pritch on this one. I also have a few grand kids who will be comin along for a ride! The big full framed cars of yesteryear weren't about passenger safety.....we didn't know...along came the CAFE(corporate average fuel economy) laws in the early 70's which forced manufacturer downsizing/to make smaller cars cheaper on fuel....hence the unitized stub followed by the full unibodies......Bored yet ..lol.. So needless to say I agree with the aforementioned importance of this . Today's cars are very safe ..seat belts are mandatory. How this fits in here with our early gen cars can be a hot topic. We only drive em in fair weather etc. There ought to an allowance for seat belts and safety when it comes to "period correct" and "collector plate" designations. I'm certainly passionate and interested in this discussion.
It's a good topic that doesn't get discussed much.
The companies never focused much on safety back in the day because it wasn't sexy and didn't sell cars. People cared about style and performance, while safety remained the elephant in the room that nobody talked about.
Basically it took government regulations to get the manufacturers to take occupant safety seriously. Today it's hard to imagine that seat belts were not equipped on many cars, and even later were considered optional until 1965. Then it was another step again to get people to use them...
I am really impressed with the seat belt installation shown here. I wasnt sure if there would be sufficient structure in the roof to support the shoulder harness. After seeing the pictures my next project will have three point belts.
Thanks,
Paul
