US/Canada rear bumper vs. other regions

From this diagram in the Collision Repair manual, it looks as if in the US and Canada we get a fat aluminum rear bumper mounted on short stubby little crushboxes. Everybody else gets a thinner (but 1470 MPa steel!) rear bumper, mounted on longer, presumably more crushable, crushboxes.

Anybody know more about the differences, or the (presumably regulatory) context behind them?

-Chap

 

Bumping this and tagging for, maybe, @Elektroingenieur, who so often seems able to find excellent sources of information for outside the US market....

It would be interesting to find part numbers and prices for the longer non-US crushboxes and that crazy 1470 MPa steel bumper. I wonder what that animal weighs.

-Chap

 

Thanks!

So, we get the short stubby crush boxes (52015-47040 and 52016-47020), the big fat aluminum bumper (52171-47060), and the energy-absorbing hunk of styrofoam.

Japan gets the same stubby crush boxes, same fat aluminum bumper, and no hunk of styrofoam. (Presumably there's room, then, under the bumper cover, to add that hunk, if somebody wanted to.)

Europe gets the longer-looking crush boxes (52015-47050 and 52016-47030), the skinnier but miracle-steel bumper (52023-12240), and no styrofoam.

Oddly, Japan earlier (2009.04 - 2009.08) got different crush boxes that were neither of the above.

I know they call it the 'reinforcement', but I just can't bring myself to call "the long tough metal piece that takes the hit" anything else but the 'bumper' really.

-Chap

Edit: looks like the Beetles in that IIHS paper had two different designs, neither involving styrofoam, but one involving crush boxes that look sort of like Toyota's (stubby ones), and one involving telescoping-tube-like energy absorbing things. (The article says those "can absorb low-speed crash forces and then return to their original positions, like shock absorbers", but I'm not all that sure why the return part is desirable ... most energy-absorbing structures now seem to be built to absorb as much as possible and not return any.)

The crush boxes are inexpensive, so it doesn't seem like a huge burden if they have to be replaced after a crash. But it seemed like the trouble with the Beetles was they didn't crush straight, so they let the bumper slip out of position and do override/underride damage.

 

Now my friend's old Galaxie 500, you could totally stand in there and work on the engine. Could have been a room.

-Chap