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Iconic Sports Cars Fail to Meet IIHS Crash Standards


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These are also the cars most likely to get into an accident. With such a long front-end, you'd think the Mustang could sort out the small overlap.

This one reason they may be moving the Replacement of that very old platform up.

 

Ford-Mustang-IIHS.jpg

 

IIHS-graphic.jpg

Edited by Biker16
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These are also the cars most likely to get into an accident. With such a long front-end, you'd think the Mustang could sort out the small overlap.

That was what I thought too. No surprise the Camaro was the best since its the newest platform, but I would have thought it to be better too hatter all of GM's high stepping on it being a stronger platform than its predecessor.

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Although the mustang could have done better. The injury risk was low. Also, this is interesting.

"The Mustang came closest to achieving Top Safety Pick status, Lund said. Its small-front overlap rating holds it back, but otherwise it outperforms both its competitors in roof strength."

 

From IIHS.org

The Mustang's structural performance in the small overlap test fell short of the Camaro's but was an improvement over the Challenger. The roof buckled, and the driver's survival space was compromised by considerable intrusion of the door hinge pillar and instrument panel. Still, measures taken from the dummy indicated low risk of injuries to all body regions, including the legs and feet.

Edited by fordtech1
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Ultimately you have to decide what is more important, roof strength or small overlap, IIHS doesn't really clarify what we should care about more. Personally I would be more concerned by small overlap since I suspect rollovers are less common. Acceptable is a decent rating for Ford which has no "Good" ratings outside of the F-150. Chevy has almost all of their vehicles in the Good range even before the latest updates (except their trucks) so Chevy has been well ahead of Ford on this for quite sometime.

Edited by BORG
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Personally with roof strength being a issue for so long I find it more important. Small overlap is something iihs came up with to be relevant because all cars were passing. Ofcourse those accidents happen, but it's less life threatening with a leg up injury than head. Look at older SUV and some cars that have been in rollovers, the survival space is scary.

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I thought the Mustang was on a new platform already. I find it hard to believe the old one would do so well with the new test.

 

I'm pretty sure that the safety cell of the S197 wasn't really touched that much as it was transformed in the S550...its about as new of a platform as you can get without a completely from the ground up redesign.

 

Not to mention that the small offset crash standard must be something new....the 2010 Mustang had no problem passing the medium offset crash standard. I guess the small offset is basically you got very (un)lucky when hitting something and all the force is outside of the shock towers/engine mounts and firewall takes the brunt of the impact...in real life how much does that really happen?

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Will be interesting to see if they beefed up the 2017 Escape (poor) and 2017 Fusion (acceptable) to get a good rating. As for platforms the Camry is a top safety pick + and the basis of that platform goes back decades, they can improve it just depends on the cost.

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I'm pretty sure that the safety cell of the S197 wasn't really touched that much as it was transformed in the S550...its about as new of a platform as you can get without a completely from the ground up redesign.

 

Not to mention that the small offset crash standard must be something new....the 2010 Mustang had no problem passing the medium offset crash standard. I guess the small offset is basically you got very (un)lucky when hitting something and all the force is outside of the shock towers/engine mounts and firewall takes the brunt of the impact...in real life how much does that really happen?

Manufactures knew in 2009 it was coming, like the Auto braking etc in 2016 (like they know the Amber Turn-signal, Adaptive headlight, headlight rating for 2018) I think intent of this test is for when people go off road and strike Trees, Traffic Signals, telephone poles, as well as two lane roads with a small drift over.

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From my anecdotal experience, Small Overlap is a very common type of collision, just look at a salvage yard and you'll see this. It makes sense since they are near miss accidents as people correct last minute or slightly drive over the lane. And all things being equal, I would much rather go with the car or company that can do better in this test.

 

The Escape's poor ranking actually haunts it all over the internet, frequently I see commenters questioning if Ford has done anything to improve this with the 2017 Ford Escape.

 

My guess is that Ford is aware of its weak performance and intentionally avoided engineering for this test for ideological or economic reasons, but we saw them respond to the F-150's uneven results which threatened to undermine their Aluminum PR campaign, they reacted quickly to correct it. Considering their latest all-new vehicle Edge still didn't earn a Good ranking probably reveals they are still not interested in most cases. The MKX is actually their first vehicle to earn Good in this test and I'm sure the Lincoln guys had something to do with fixing that. As long as Ford can get away from Poor or Marginal, I think they'll be alright and will slowly catch-up like the rest of the industry. I think it's very admirable that Chevy can achieve such high scores while still light weighting their cars.

Edited by BORG
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I find these crash tests somewhat amusing. I live in a rural area of Northern Lower Michigan. Up here, the odds are much greater that I will hit a deer, or an elk, with my vehicle, rather than hit another car/truck. I wish IHS would test for that, not crashing into a stationary barrier.

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I find these crash tests somewhat amusing. I live in a rural area of Northern Lower Michigan. Up here, the odds are much greater that I will hit a deer, or an elk, with my vehicle, rather than hit another car/truck. I wish IHS would test for that, not crashing into a stationary barrier.

 

Those are minor collisions relative to hitting another vehicle. The most dangerous part of those collisions is when people try to avoid them and hit a tree or roll over in a ditch. But I drive all over Michigan and I'm often terrified by the prospect of a deer suddenly appearing in-front of me at 80MPH in the middle of the night. Fortunately I've managed to escape this, although my entire family has not been so lucky.

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Ultimately you have to decide

 

Or, you know, you look at the statistics, and decide that there's barely a dime's worth of difference between the Camaro and the Mustang in terms of the astronomical odds against you being in an accident of such severity in the first place.

 

If you get a 5% lower risk of injury in the Mustang vs. the Camaro, but your odds of being in an injury accident with either is, something like 1 in 10,000,000 for every mile you drive, well, who the heck cares?

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If you're lucky and it doesn't come through your windshield, which is a major point of failure...

 

 

 

This is a true story. I may have the details wrong, but the basic story is accurate.

A guy I know (not well, more of an acquaintance) lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. His wife, sister, mother and aunt were traveling in their car (not sure what type ) someplace in Michigan’s U.P. when they hit a deer. The deer hit the front of the car, smashed through the windshield, traveled through the interior of the car, and exited out the back window. Two of the people in the car were killed.

That’s the type of accidents we see in rural areas, not running into some barrier at 40 MPH.

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Or, you know, you look at the statistics, and decide that there's barely a dime's worth of difference between the Camaro and the Mustang in terms of the astronomical odds against you being in an accident of such severity in the first place.

 

If you get a 5% lower risk of injury in the Mustang vs. the Camaro, but your odds of being in an injury accident with either is, something like 1 in 10,000,000 for every mile you drive, well, who the heck cares?

 

 

I agree with you, the Mustang performed well enough next to the Camaro and shouldn't be a significant concern. Ultimately for me it's an intellectual exercise, like all cars I care about the potential or the engineering quality. I have a higher regard for GM's safety engineering than Ford's and they've demonstrated consistently superior expertise in this regard. However this doesn't mean I would buy a Chevy over a Ford because I think the Ford is unsafe. For me it comes down to my loved ones, I would not want them driving in certain vehicles like the Ford Escape for it's poor ranking, or the Focus/Fiesta simply because they are too small and also come up short in those tests. If they HAD to be in those type of vehicles, I would MUCH rather they be in a Chevy based on their crash performance rankings.

Edited by BORG
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" I have a higher regard for GM's safety engineering than Ford's and they've demonstrated consistently superior expertise in this regard"

 

And yet, the all new platform Camaro still didn't do better than the Mustang.

 

It's rather odd that new sixth generation Camaro doesn't offer a forward collision mitigation system. Even GM's A-segment car, 2016 Chevy Spark, offers at least basic FCW.

 

Were an advanced FCW system available on Camaro along with minor improvements to roof strength, it would garner IIHS' TSP+ rating easily.

Edited by aneekr
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