Internet Gold(?) | The Most Insane Car Crash Repair Videos on the Internet | Arthur Tussik, Russia

Today's Internet Gold post is special. It carries a question mark in parenthesis behind my "trademark" Internet Gold.

Let's find out why!

In today's special Internet Gold(?) post, I want to present to you the most insane car repair videos that anybody dares to put onto YouTube: The Arthur Tussik YouTube channel.

I will try to make this topic interesting and informative -- even if you're not at all into cars. 

Stay tuned until the end,

because this post is also a PSA  (public service announcement) in which we listen in on some car collision repair experts giving their opinion on the specific repair job that I want to highlight in this post.

Let's begin

with Arthur Tussik. He is a Russian car body / collision repairman -- which means that he fixes crashed cars. And he does some insane -- let me emphasize that again: insane -- crash repairs. He also runs a very successful YouTube channel with currently about 670, 000 subscribers and regularly gets millions of views on his videos in which he presents his car repair work.

The video which I want to highlight, is the repair of a BMW 7 series.

"BMW 7 series?", you might ask. "Isn't that the kind of car that costs new around $100, 000 and twenty years later, it is pretty much worthless due to bio-degradable cables and electronics that constantly break? With super expensive parts and labor costs for repairs?"

-- "Yes.", I would answer. "Pretty much a typical German car."

And you have to know about me that I'm a German who is quite a bit into cars.

Now that we talked about that, let me state that

it is a very smashed BMW 7 series.

"Is that really worth fixing?" you might ask.

-- "No.", I would answer. "I think that this particular car could have only served as a parts donor for other cars."

And remember that I'm a German who is quite a bit into cars.  

But Arthur disagrees

-- and he has the tools and the skills to make the car look brand new after his repair... 

So let's watch! (Pro tip: You might want to increase the playback speed. Unless you speak Russian, you can only read the "subtitles" anyway -- and the video is pretty much self-explanatory -- even without subtitles.)

Well, that was quite something, wasn't it? Who would have thought that the car would look like that in the end -- after he basically cut away about 40% of the entire body?

The end result looks great, right?

-- Right... but what do car collision repair experts think about Arthur's repair? As I said, at one point during the process, the car was pretty much down to almost nothing.

Let's consult a handful of collision repair experts. Thanks to the internet their opinions are just a click away.

For the sake of time, I would suggest that you jump to the verdict at 27 minutes and 30 seconds. However, feel free to watch the entire video if you're interested and got the time for it. For our purpose, the verdict is absolutely sufficient. 

The female expert sums up the issues:

The energy transfer of the car's body in case of a crash was changed by Arthur's decision to repair structural elements of the body which are supposed to crumple in a crash. The repair increased the stiffness of these parts and if the car ever gets into a front crash again, a higher amount of energy is transferred to the passengers instead of being absorbed by the crumpling elements of the car's body.

A good-looking deathtrap

So, basically, the repair transformed the car from a crumpling protective foam into a rigid death trap for its occupants -- in case it ever gets into a similar accident again. Figuratively speaking, of course.

The main issue is the repair of the front left rail. Arthur cut it apart and hammered and pulled it straight before welding it back together. That changed the material's attributes. Contrary to what you might think, it made the material harder (not softer) to deform. And contrary to what you might think, harder is not better, it is much worse.

The reason is:

What kills a person in an accident is not the speed, it is the extreme acceleration. When a car crashes, its speed changes very rapidly from an initial speed to a different one. Think for instance of a crash against a wall that does not deform. All the space the car has to decelerate is its own crumple zone. Basically, the length of the car is reduced by the impact. The less the length of the car changes, the higher the acceleration that the human cargo is subjected to.

This argument holds as long as the passengers are still protected by the surrounding car and don't come in contact with either the obstacle or parts of the car due to too much deformation. But in such a case, a more rigid car would not be preferable either, because it would lead to higher accelerations which would probably cause just as much damage to the occupants.

The experts' motivation

While we could argue that the people in the video are self-proclaimed experts and we could question their motivations behind making this video -- maybe they want to defend high repair costs, because that's their livelihood, for instance -- I believe that there is at least some truth to what they say. 

So, the take away message is

don't try this at home

-- and be careful when you buy rebuilt cars. They might look amazing -- even when inspected in great detail -- and could still be a death trap... 

However,

I still enjoy watching Arthur Tussik's insane car repair videos and I enjoy marveling at the end results. You can do that, too. Just keep in mind what you're actually watching and put it in the right context. I enjoy his videos while constantly shaking my head to express my disapproval. 😅🙈

By the way, that is the reason why there is a question mark in parenthesis in the title.

One more thing

Have you noticed that the parts from the "donor car"must have come from a BMW 7 series of around the same model year which was significantly less smashed than the one that was being repaired in the video?

Let's think about that some more:

What kind of car could such donor parts come from, I wonder. If in Russia it makes economic sense to repair a BMW 7 series which was that badly smashed -- how badly smashed must the donor car have been to be deemed not repair-worthy?

On the other hand, we see that the donor car must have been in a much better condition -- otherwise, the donor parts could not have been in such a good condition.

Something doesn't add up...

Cutting apart a better shell to fix a worse one, is strange, to say the least. I have a suspicion... Can you already guess it? 

What if the donor car had one attribute that made it only usable for parts? Maybe it had something to do with its history -- and its VIN. VIN stands for vehicle identification number. Do you see what I am hinting at? 

What do you think?

This is quite a controversial video. And quite a controversial theory that I am hinting at in the end of the article.

What do you think about any of the above topics? Let me know in the comments.

The next installment of Internet Gold will also deal with car repairs -- but from a completely different angle.

After that, we will return to my favorite topic of "the best music videos -- in the world". (Think of Jeremy Clarkson from The Grand Tour while reading the last part of that sentence).