In the frontal collision of cars, front parts of cars such as engine rail and side members that are composed of hatted section tubes should absorb most of the collision energy far the passenger compartment not to be deformed. For these reasons the study on the collapse characteristics, maximum crushing load and energy absorption capacity of hatted section tubes are needed. In this study, top hatted section tubes and double hatted section tubes are investigated. The maximum crushing load of hatted section tubes is induced from plastic buckling stress of plates by considering that the hatted section tubes are composed of plates with each different boundary conditions and that its material has a strain hardening effect. On this concept maximum crushing load equations of hatted section tubes are derived and verified by experiments. from the results of experiment, the differences of collapse characteristics between top hatted section tube and double hatted section tube are analysed. And mean crushing loads of hatted section tubes from experiments are compared with other theory.