Amazons are renowned for their robustness and the quality of the swedish steel.

I have heard several stories from folk whose Amazon had an unplanned encounter with another car, or a wall, or a shed, and came off considerably better than the opposition.

So, pens to paper chaps and recount your stories if this happened to you. Sorry this is not really technical, but it will be good reading.

Tom

Yep, all true.
Many years ago (I drove my first '67 122S) I was caught by a Opel Kadet from the rear standing before a traffic light.
He was doing 30-40 km/h and I was pushed into the Toyota standing in front of me.

The driver of the Opel had to climb out of the window because the fenders had moved backwards and blocking the doors.
My nose was kissing the front seat of the Toyota and a lot of oil and cooling water ran on the street.

After checking all were well I pulled my fenders off the front wheels, checked under the hood (all was well, technically speaking) and started the car.
A policeman came towards me and couldn't believe the car was drivable and asked if I needed a flatback.
"No thank's" I responded, "If you don't need me anymore I'd like to go home"

Needless to say I was the only car who left the scene running it's own engine....

Here's one that happened to me only a couple of weeks ago. I was just outside of London, UK on a particularly busy junction of the M25/A20. I was in a really slow queue, one of those when you realise that you should have actually exited, even if the exit wasn't yours, just to get out of the queue. Anyway a guy in a Mazda saloon was an front and obviously had the same idea because he tried to reverse past me on the inside through a gap that any idiot could see was narrower than his car. I knew he was going to side-swipe me and I could see his rear lights getting closer to my front wing, but wouldn't you believe it, my horn decided that this was the day it wasn't going to work, so I banged the steering wheel in vain as my lovely swedish steely crome bumper just squashed the side of his car as if it were marshmalllow. His side sustained a lot of damage, and mine just a slight crease in the wing by the side light and a line of his paint along my bumper. He couldn't believe it, but didn't hang around long after I let him go without any formalities.

My first car was sold to me by a guy who ran into, and demolished, a 300 year old dry flint wall in Wales. It had to have a new front end but apart from that was driveable.

Eric

Ditto. . . for my story on swedish steel vs. stone wall, see response to earlier post asking about fiberglass fenders (wings).

Tom who??
--
George Downs, The "original" Walrus3, Bartlesville, Oklahoma

George;
Uum, I don't quite get this question. Is this amnesia brought on my a rear-ender?

Tom

Probably not - didn't mean to be offensive. We have had a number of
different people named "Tom" posting here over the years and I was
just curious as to who was asking.

Here's one that happened in around 1972.

One day my wife was bringing me home from work in the '63 122s
through the front gate of Fort Clayton and stopped about 8 or 10
feet behind a Datsun which was stopped for a pedestrian in a
crosswalk. A '58 Buick came up behind us and didn't stop, at
least not until it had hit us and driven our car into the back of
the Datsun. When we figured out what had happened, we looked
around, noticed the sorry condition of the Datsun, with the back
caved in halfway up the trunk lid, and got out for a better look.
Remembering what had happened to Rapid Red, my 544 that got
"totaled" in a similar incident, I was pretty downcast because I
was fond of the 122 and didn't relish the prospect of it being a
total loss too. I looked back and noted that shards of die cast
grille littered a rapidly growing puddle of anti-freeze behind
us, so I stepped back for a closer look. It was mass destruction
from his hood ornament to below his bumper, headlights broken,
grill shattered, fan in his radiator, etc, then I looked at the
back of the 122, fearing the worst. The bumper guards were
pushed about 3/4" outboard on both sides and there may have been
some new scratches on the bumper, and each bumper guard had made
about a quarter-inch crease in the lip of the body where they had
briefly met. Biting a convenient bullet, I walked around in
front to survey the damage there and found 2 items: a horizontal
crease less than 1/8" deep and about 3" long across the 122's
nose, just below the bottom of the hood, and the bottom center
portion of the bumper was rolled under about an inch. If you
didn't know where to look, you'd have had a hard time to find the
damage on the 122. The Datsun driver was particularly unhappy
because he had just gotten his car out of the body shop 2 days
before following a similar accident, and the Buick driver had
borrowed the car, which had neither brakes nor insurance, (but it
DID have an automatic transmission) and driven it from the
Atlantic side (50 miles over a very congested highway) and was
due to leave Panama on a permanent change of station (PCS) the
following day. The Military Police asked me if I wanted to file
a claim, but I declined, figuring the fellow in back had enough
problems without me adding to them. That incident convinced me
about the structural integrity of the 122s body.
--
George Downs, The "original" Walrus3, Bartlesville, Oklahoma