Honda, Toyota missing from group's safest cars list
Photo credit: AP | This undated photo released by Buick shows the 2010 LaCrosse CXS. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety named 27 vehicles as winners of their top safety pick award for the 2010 model year. (AP Photo/Buick)**NO SALES**
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An insurance group is, in effect, criticizing dozens of new vehicles for, in its view, providing inadequate protection in rollover crashes, which kill more than 9,000 Americans a year.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose crash testing and evaluation methods often draw fire from carmakers when their models score poorly, says its newest list of "top safety picks," released today, includes only 27 cars and sport utility vehicles, compared with 94 last year, mostly because the group added a new criteria for this year's evaluation: the strength of roofs. It says they must be able to support four times the vehicle's weight without deforming more than 5 inches, to prevent death or serious injury in a rollover.
Previously, the group based its rankings only on vehicle performance in the institute's frontal, side- and rear-impact crash tests and on whether the vehicle had safety features such as electronic stability control.
Conspicuously missing from the new top-picks list are strong sellers like the Honda Accord. However, the institute does not rate certain very expensive models, such as the Mercedes S-class.
Institute president Adrian Lund said the Accord and the Ford Fusion - the latter named "Car of the Year" Tuesday by Motor Trend magazine - missed the mark for roofs by being not quite strong enough. "Honda and Ford would have to make only minor changes to achieve good ratings for roof strength," Lund said.
Chevrolet Malibus also are top picks, the group said, if built after October, when General Motors dropped a supplier whose seats offered what the institute said was inadequate rear-impact protection.
Also missing for purportedly inadequate protection in rear impacts was the Toyota Camry. In fact, the institute said, none of the world's largest carmaker's models, including its Lexus luxury vehicles and its youth-targeted Scion line - made the cut this year.
"This car's seats and head restraints are rated marginal for protection against whiplash injury," the institute said of the Camry.
Toyota said, "IIHS' statement that Toyota was shut out for 2010 is extreme and misleading, considering there are 38 Toyota, Lexus and Scion models [and] only three were tested for roof strength."
American Honda Motor Co. noted in a statement that nine 2009 models and all five Acura models were top safety picks last year but that for 2010 only the Civic and Element survived the new roof-strength evaluation.
"Our vehicles continue to provide the same high levels of real-world safety as they did before IIHS changed their testing," Honda said.
The institute said more vehicles might be added to the top picks list as it continues testing 2010 models. But it said the ranking being released Wednesday is based on results of 52 vehicles whose roofs it has tested and the refusal by manufacturers of 93 more, including pickup trucks and vans, to reimburse the group for the costs of the vehicles to be crash-tested. Manufacturers routinely offer such reimbursements when they suspect or know, based on their own testing, that the vehicles will pass, Lund said, and typically refuse that request if they suspect or know that the vehicles will fail.
LARGE CARS
Buick LaCrosse
FordFord Taurus
Lincoln MKS
Volvo S80
MIDSIZE CARS
Audi A3
ChevroletChevrolet Malibu built after October 2009
Chrysler Sebring 4-door with optional ESC
DodgeDodge Avenger with
optional ESC
Mercedes C class
Subaru Legacy
Subaru Outback
Volkswagen Jetta sedan
Volkswagen Passat sedan
Volvo C30
Honda Civic 4-door with optional ESC, except Si
Kia Soul
Nissan Cube
Subaru Impreza except WRX
Volkswagen Golf 4-door MIDSIZE SUVS
Dodge Journey
Subaru Tribeca
Volvo XC60
Volvo XC90
SMALL SUVS
Honda Element
Jeep Patriot with optional side thorax air bags
Subaru Forester
Volkswagen Tiguan
