Survival Car II was a modified 1960 Chevrolet Bel Air retrofitted with futuristic safety features

Introducing the 1960 Cornell-Liberty Survival Car, the vehicle Detroit wouldn’t mass-produce because “safety doesn’t sell.”

The idea wasn’t entirely new. Chrysler had fitted its DeSoto range with padded dashes as early as 1937, but Detroit’s car-makers were riding a wave of profits that gave them little incentive to change. So the insurance industry teamed up with Cornell’s researchers to ask the question that Detroit would not: what would make car crashes survivable?

In 1957, it was established that the primary reason people died in car crashes was the interior design: spike like steering columns, sharp edged radio knobs, and a lack of seat belts. But Ford couldn’t be convinced to make even seat belts a standard feature: they were sold as part of a “Life Guard” package — as an option.

After Liberty Mutual Insurance figured safe-driving public service announcements weren’t enough to cut claims costs, it built the Survival Car, featuring back-seat only passengers, a rudder instead of a steering wheel, and (gasp!) seat belts.