09/08/2026
It is 2026 and there is still no federal bumper standard for a pickup truck. There never has been one.
Meanwhile the car parked next to it spent the 1970s getting redesigned around exactly that rule.
Here is the rule everybody blames and almost nobody has read. It was FMVSS 215. It took effect September 1, 1972, and for the 1973 model year it required a passenger car to take a 5 mph hit in front and 2.5 in back.
It never said no damage.
Go read it. Through 1978 the only things that had to survive were the safety pieces. Lights still working and still aimable. Hood, trunk and doors still opening. Fuel, cooling and exhaust not leaking. The bumper itself was allowed to be destroyed. A no damage requirement on the bumper face did not arrive until the 1979 models.
So the battering ram was a choice. The rule specified a performance, not a shape, and Chevrolet proved it twice in the same model year. The 1973 Corvette met it behind a body color urethane nose. So did the 1973 Chevelle Laguna. Both passed. Neither looks like a bumper car.
And 1973 was front only at five. The rear only had to handle 2.5, which chrome could already do. That is why the 1973 Corvette is the only Corvette ever built with a urethane nose and a chrome tail. One year, one car, the entire regulation readable on a single body.
1974 is the year you can actually see. The rear went to 5 as well, and a height zone got added that forced the bumper to sit between 16 and 20 inches off the ground. That height rule did more damage to proportions than the speed ever did. The Camaro gained about seven inches.
Want a number that is not an opinion? NHTSA's own evaluation tracked the Nova's rear bumper system at 31 pounds in 1972, 47 in 1973, and 81 in 1974. It nearly tripled in three model years.
Now the trucks.
They were not left out by an oversight or a loophole. Congress wrote it into the statute. Federal law defines a passenger motor vehicle and then excludes, in its own words, a truck not designed primarily to carry its operator or passengers. Today's regulation still applies only to passenger vehicles other than multipurpose passenger vehicles. There is no federal bumper requirement for a pickup. Not a weaker one. None.
Worth being straight about one thing. Nobody at Chevrolet ever wrote down that they kept the small bumper because they were exempt. They were never required to change it and they didn't. Those are two different claims and only the second one is documented. And these trucks were not running wild either. The 1973 models were the first full size Chevrolet trucks with a collapsing energy absorbing steering column. They got the safety engineering. They just did not get the bumper.
One last thing, because this one gets said wrong constantly. The bumper rule did not kill the muscle car. It showed up fourth. Compression ratios came down for 1971. Horsepower ratings switched from gross to net for 1972, which made every engine look weaker on paper without a single mechanical change. Bumpers landed in 1973. Catalytic converters in 1975. The bumper is just the only one of the four you can spot from across a parking lot.
