Cheaper Cars Beat Expensive Luxury Model In Crash Safety Tests
Posted August 16, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
They cost a small fortune and they’re considered among the most prestigious cars on the road. But when it comes to accidents, you might not want to be in a new BMW sedan. The luxury car with all the bells and whistles inside rated the worst of all the models probed in new side-impact crash tests. The rankings, which were compiled by the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, showed the BMW 5 Series provided good air bag protection for your head in the simulated smash-ups, but the inflatables designed to protect the chest and abdomen didn’t work as well.
So if the Beemer didn’t beam, who did? The Institute reveals the Acura RL, the Kia Amanti and the Volvo S80 all garnered the highest ratings. Cadillac’s STS and Mercedes’ E-Class were second.
The tests were supposed to show what would happen to a driver if another vehicle hit the car from the side at about 50 kilometres an hour. That’s considered the speed of a serious crash, and the Institute notes side impact collisions are second only to head-ons for fatalities. “Growing sales of SUVs and pickups have exacerbated height mismatches among passenger vehicles, thereby increasing the risks to occupants of many vehicles struck in the side,” Institute President Adrian Lund explains.
Ironically, the Kia is the lowest priced of all the cars tested – and it came out on top for safety. It’s more than $20,000 cheaper than the BMW. Not surprisingly, the people at Bavarian Motor Works take issue with the tests. Spokesman Thomas Plucinsky claims the dummy inside the car was injured only because it was hit by the arm rest. “The issue is that depending on the location of seat, the location of dummy, the location of the sled, the results could change,” he outlines. “This was one test on one day on one car.”
But Lund believes there’s another lesson to be learned from the findings. “The Amanti shows that you don’t have to buy an expensive car to get good protection in crashes with SUVs and pickups.”
See the results or check your own vehicle’s ranking.
Photo credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
