Can you say monocoque? Well, neither can I. It's not even in the spelling dictionary for this website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocoque#Automobiles I hate unibodies whatever they're named, but it's hard to argue about their protective qualities in a crash. Problem is, everything but the passenger compartment is pretty much made to fall off, little by little, in the event of a crash (or in the event of wear and tear, corrosion of any kind, etc.). They're better now, but who can forget those monstrosities like Dodge Darts and Plymouth Dusters, which eventually, even in the absence of major collisions, would start to "dog track" as the front and back subframes started to skew--often just with normal driving. Or the later Novas starting about '75 that would start to sag behind the front wheel wells? There were even a few cases of Dart/Duster models separating completely at the firewall.
Now that couldn't have been safe, either, but it's harder to run "falling apart on the highway" tests than it is to run crash tests.
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