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Glass fiber reinforced bumper beams are being used on increasingly more automobiles due to the weight and energy management advantages the materials have over steel. Current bumpers are manufactured using basically three fiber orientations or combinations thereof: 1) Random, chopped and continuous 2) Unidirectional, continuous along the length of the beam 3) 0.90, continuous on the length and perpendicular, woven For the purpose of this paper, the composite used for all FEA models and sample moldings is a 40% continuous glass fiber reinforced, polypropolene resin based, sheet stampable thermoplastic. It is possible to assume that the results can be generatalized to other composites. The finite element analysis found that significant increases in performances were achieved over the conventional fiber orientations.