Aftermarket airbags?!

MotorWeek clip from 1994 with Pat Goss talking about the aftermarket Breed SRS-40 system.

Imagine it’s 1994. You’ve seen the crash tests and heard the stories of airbags saving lives, and you’d like to have at least one in your car. However, you bought your current car a few years ago, and don’t have the $10,000 or more to get a new, airbag-equipped car. You think, “Surely there must be a cheaper way to get that potentially life-saving protection.”

As it turns out, there was a good chance that you’d be in luck. Breed Technologies, which made airbag components and airbag systems for many American cars, offered a retrofit driver airbag. It was available for 26 different 1987 and newer car models – so if you wanted an airbag in your 1973 AMC Gremlin, you’re out of luck, but if you were in the much more likely situation of owning a 1991 Chevy Lumina, you could add a bag to it. 

The unit was called the “SRS-40”, the name referencing the 40-liter capacity of the bag. Most OEM driver airbags were 50-80 liters at the time, so this bag was smaller. It was designed purely to supplement seat belts; to underscore this fact, the airbag cover had “Seat Belt Use Required” embossed on it. At the time, OEM airbag systems were required to provide protection in a 30-mph barrier crash for unbelted occupants; the SRS-40 was not designed to meet this requirement. 

The unit was entirely contained within the steering wheel and cost about $800. The bag was triggered via G-force sensors in the steering wheel; sensors located in the front of the car, like OEM bags, would have been cost-prohibitive for an aftermarket unit. This meant that this airbag system was more likely to be triggered late, or not at all, than a traditional OEM bag. 

Despite the tradeoffs, the SRS-40 airbag unit provided a significant boost in safety for the cars it was retrofitted to – especially ones that already had relatively poor crash test ratings, such as the aforementioned 1990-1994 Lumina.