Hey everyone I thought you might enjoy this. A few months ago my girlfriend and I were driving home for a break during school. I was in front in my 1986 240 wagon and she was behind me in her 95 Nissan Altima. Well a car in front of me hit the brakes so I hit mine, stopping fine. But along comes my girlfriend and plows into the back of me. Here are the pictues of the damage...


http://home.comcast.net/~mdbryant1/car.htm

Yes, I enjoyed the story and the pix. It's fun to be a Volvo fan and have an experience like this to reinforce our opinion. Sorry physics explained by others had to interfere with your 'fun'.
It makes me wonder, however. If you had been driving the rice burner and she driving the brick, how would the pix look? Perhaps similar, but I doubt it.
My 940 is in the body shop after a deer strike. While there, another customer was there with a Honda after repairs, complaining about her power windows. She was politely told that her car (150k miles) was about worn out anyway. After she left, I commented on my '84 240s' power windows, antenna, etc. still worked fine. Body shop person said, "Well, ya, it's a Volvo!"
Point is: Keep being proud of brick ownership. Last longer, and in a real crash, you're better off than anything else!
Mark
--
'94 940 Wagon, '84 240 turbo sedan

I think your experience is fairly typical in rear end collisions. Very often the vehicle that was rear-ended will fair better - Volvo or not.

However, before you break out the champagne, understand that your car may have a significant amount of damage. My wife was hit like this in her 240 and the car had much less visible damage than you. I was looking at $1500 damage for a new bumper cover, bumper struts, and other misc hardware and labor.

The car that hit her was a Saturn and like your girlfriend's car it did not fair as well. My wife said that the other person drove off with her front bumper dragging on the ground after all of the paperwork was done.

In a rear end crash, both vehicles are often nose-diving from braking. So the rear vehicle's grille hits the front vehicle's bumper, if the vehicles are ordinarily the same height. This usually results in much greater damage to the rear vehicle (at least it is usually the case that the driver of the rear vehicle is at fault in such a crash due to tailgating or not paying attention).

Obviously the Volvo came out ahead -- as we'd all expect (preaching to the choir? This is why we're all here at this Volvo site :-).
But... playing devil's advocate for a moment (and I'm certainly no fan of japanese cars), some of the Altima's collapse was probably intentionally engineered into the car -- we have to remember that this is how a car absorbs the energy of a frontal impact, so it probably crushed as it was designed to do, to save your girlfriend from injury.
And, of course, we all hope that neither you nor your girlfriend were hurt (except for her pride -- be sure to remind her not to follow you so closely next time).
Thanks for sharing.

Oh, and your and your girlfriend's cars were probably nosediving (i.e., pitching forward) from the heavy braking (i.e., with your tail high and your girlfriend's nose low), so it's no wonder that her lowered grille (and radiator, etc.) hit your raised bumper (as her bumper uselessly slid underneath yours), which really isn't a fair contest.

Well, first off, I hope that you are both OK.

I had a similar experience in my 1966 Bronco about four years ago. I was sitting at a stoplight when a mid 90's S-10 truck rammed me dead square in the back. The Bronco at that time had the spare tire mounted on a swing away carrier that attached to the tailgate. The spare tire was not inflated (had a leak) and absorbed the impact, with extremely minimal damage to the tailgate of my Bronco. The front of the S-10 was demolished and had antifreeze puddling underneath it almost immediately.

Take care,
Keith
--
1983 245 Turbo, 165K miles; 1987 244 DL, 272K miles; 1980 244 DL (RIP); 1966 Ford Bronco- straight six, three-on-the-tree, NO frills