Unreliable maybe, but certainly not unsafe. Modern cars are significantly much safer than cars, even large cars, from the past (excluding death trap SUVs).

I'll take a Civic Si with six or eight airbags and a safety cell over Detroit iron from the 1980's everytime.

Death trap SUV's? That's absurd, if SUV's were death traps, nobody would buy them (remember they are still among the most popular vehicles) and the government would have banned them, so that was a silly assumption, if I was going to be in a wreck (especially with my family in the car), I would sure rather be in a large SUV with front and side-curtain airbags then a Honda Civic, any day!

I firmly believe my old Detroit steel will plow right through a brand new SUV when one finally pulls out in front of me.

These cars did poorly in 35 MPH government crash tests when new. However, my mother was in an accident with her 78 Caprice and the only damage to the Chevy was a scraped bumper rub strip, while the car she hit (guy pulled in front of her for insurance fraud, but there was witnesses) was totaled. The problem is at faster speeds, the heavy steel car doesn't absorb much of the collision forces and passengers take a real beating. The big old cars might have less damage to them when a modern car is crushed (that's why they're great for demo derbies), but the passengers of the newer car will have minor injuries while the passengers of the old car might not walk away. It's worth looking up old crash test data when buying a old car, because certain models and model years did better than others.

I need some skirts for my 86 pontiac parisienne.