Surprisingly Unsafe: Early-1980s and Older Mazdas

The safety of Mazda’s recent vehicles has been impressive. IIHS beefed up its side impact test in 2021, putting 20 small SUVs through the first round of testing. Only Mazda got the highest rating of Good. Even Volvo’s offering (the XC40) only got an Acceptable! Just last month, IIHS released 11 more test results in this test mode, this time for small cars. Guess who, once again, earned the lone Good rating? Mazda! With midsize SUVs, the results were better, but still, of the 18 midsize SUVs tested, 10 earned a Good rating, of which only 2 of those got all Good sub-ratings across the board (a “perfect” rating). Guess who one of those two was made by? Mazda!
And it’s not just side impacts. Everything Mazda currently sells gets the IIHS’s Top Safety Pick+ rating. That means if you’re in a new Mazda, no matter which way you’re hit, you can expect the best possible protection. 
Mazda may have only recently climbed to the ranks of Volvo and Mercedes-Benz as a safety leader, but their safety performance has been above average for decades now. NHTSA compared automakers’ 1979-1986 crash test performance with their 1987-1993 performance in their 35-mph test, measuring the percentage of vehicles that “passed” (below 1,000 HIC and 60 Chest G’s, which equates to a 3-star rating). Most car makers showed some improvement; for the entire fleet, 37% of 1979-1986 vehicles passed, while 63% of 1987-1993 vehicles passed. 
Mazda went from 0% in 1979-1986 to 100% in 1987-1993. And this 1979-1986 performance, as well as with a few 30-mph tests conducted during the late 1970s, shows how far Mazda’s come, and how they were once near dead-last on safety. 
In the mid-1980s, Mazda began putting some efforts toward safety; in their 1982-1986 tested vehicles, though they all failed, you’d probably at least survive a 35-mph full frontal crash. 
But let’s look at their pre-1982 fare. The 1979 Mazda Pickup did so badly in a 30-mph test (remember, this is 36% less kinetic energy than 35) that it would have been effectively a guaranteed fatality for the driver. Even at 30 mph, it performed worse than all but four of the nearly 1,200 vehicles tested in the 35-mph test. In case you’re wondering, nothing else tested from 1977-1979 did this bad in the 30-mph test. 
But what about a Mazda car at 30? Again, of mass-production factory vehicles (not counting low-volume electric conversions) a 1978 Mazda RX-4 did worse than any car of its era. While a majority of passenger cars – even Japanese cars, whose safety on average lagged that of American cars at the time – could protect occupants from serious injury at this modest speed, the RX-4’s passenger would be likely to be killed, and the driver seriously injured. Severe injury risks were 58% for the driver and 92% for the passenger; most passenger cars fell below 25% for each occupant. 
At least the more modern 1977 GLC scored in the acceptable range at 30.
Speaking of the GLC, though, a 1981 GLC’s performance was dismal, with a 99% risk of severe injury to the driver from head injury. 
At 35, the 1980 Mazda 626 set a record for highest driver chest impact (a staggering 101 g’s), and both driver and passenger would probably die. Keeping in mind that the average passenger car had a severe injury risk of about 45% for each occupant circa 1980, the 626’s risks soared to 92% for the driver and 96% for the passenger. 
Congratulations on the safety progress, Mazda.