I noticed that between the earlier versions and the latest version, vehicles appeared to gain chassis rigidity which they previously didn't have, making crashes far less fun and destructive than they were previously. Whilst this is fine for modern cars, which are designed to minimize the damage to the driver compartment (fig.1) it still makes the crashes in the current cars a bit underwhelming. (imported from here) Currently cars in BeamNG remain mostly intact unless you throw them into a wall at 200MPH, whereas in earlier versions, you could drive a covet, relatively fast, into an edge and it'd literally be torn in half, whereas now it just dents the engine compartment a bit. Bearing in mind that the current cars are all 1980s and prior designs, it'd make more sense for them to literally be annihilated and torn apart by crashes (fig.2). (imported from here) Seeing as modern crash mitigation technology/ crumple zones only came into play in the 1980s (fig.3), it makes sense that the current cars shouldn't use crumple zones as effectively as they do now, but modern day cars should certainly make use of the extra rigidity. (imported from here)
There were little to no changes made to strengthen the cars. Any difference is probably imagined. They are still calibrated to be relatively accurate to real-world counterparts in various crash scenarios. Crash any BeamNG car into a wall at 100 mph and it will be absolutely obliterated. Also, the cars in the game are not from "before crumple zones." They're all from the late 80s or early 90s, when car safety was pretty well understood, including crumple zones and airbags.
