Every year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) rates passenger vehicles' ability to hold up in a crash as good, acceptable, marginal or poor. They break cars down into four size categories: large, midsize, small and minivans, and base their ratings on front, side and rear safety tests.
The vehicles that earn good ratings in each test category (front, side and rear) are given gold ratings, while those that earn good front and side ratings and acceptable rear ratings are given a silver rating.
Test results are only comparable among vehicles of similar weight, as larger vehicles are generally more protective than smaller ones.
IIHS Top Safety Picks for 2006
Large -
GOLD: Ford Five Hundred with optional side airbags -
GOLD: Mercury Montego with optional side airbags -
SILVER: Audi A6
Midsize -
GOLD: Saab 9-3 -
GOLD: Subaru Legacy -
SILVER: Audi A3 -
SILVER: Audi A4 -
SILVER: Chevrolet Malibu with optional side airbags -
SILVER: Volkswagen Jetta -
SILVER: Volkswagen Passat
Small Minivans -
No vehicles earned a gold or silver rating, most because their seat/head restraints only earned marginal or poor ratings.
Least-Safe Vehicles of 2006 The following vehicles earned "poor" ratings on both the side and rear safety tests that the IIHS conducted.
Side impact tests measure how well a passenger is protected when a vehicle is hit in the side by an SUV or pickup.
The rear safety tests measure how well a seat/head restraint protects a passenger against neck injury in rear impacts at low to moderate speeds.
-
Hyundai Elantra -
Kia Optima -
Mazda6 -
Nissan Sentra -
Suzuki Forenza -
Toyota Corolla -
Mazda MPV without optional side airbags
Note: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also conducts safety tests for frontal and side impacts (not rear). However, their rankings are based on a different scale (one to five stars) and test for different things than the IIHS tests. When the same two cars are compared using both IIHS ratings and NHTSA ratings, the ratings are often contradictory.
