A grill for a land vehicle with elastically deformable mounting means

摘要

The bodywork of a land vehicle defines an aperture 11, for example at the front of the vehicle, into which a grill 10 is secured by means of elastically deformable non-metallic mounting means 21,22 so that the grill may temporarily move relative to the surrounding bodywork when the grill receives an impact, thus absorbing impact energy. The grill may be provided with a plurality of flanges 20 which have protrusions on their rear surface for engaging with slots in the mounting means (figure 3). The grill 10 could for example be made from glass-fibre reinforced nylon, and the mounting material may be a low density foamed material. The grill may have a plurality of vertical and horizontal slats, whereby the depth of the vertical slats may be greater than that of the horizontal slats. The present invention also relates to a land vehicle grill composed of a composite material comprising fibres set in a matrix.