State of the art stuff for the time period but as chopper526 states, today the idea is to build cars without frames that are better able to absorb the impact of an accident through their use of crumple zones thus sacrificing the vehicle and hopefully sparing the occupants. I guess the idea back in the day was to build a rigid box that could sustain the impact without failing while forgetting that the passengers were going to keep moving in the direction of travel until something stopped them (a body in motion tends to stay in motion)... OUCH
Moose