Archive for the ‘2009’ Category

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air has been crashed into a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu—in a head-on frontal-offset test, at 40 mph.

The result is not only interesting viewing for our inner gawkers; it's a lesson in how far occupant protection has advanced over the years.

Watching the modern Malibu, the hood area deforms significantly but the passenger area looks almost entirely intact. Shift your eyes over to the 1959 Chevy and it’s the stuff of old highway-safety and shock-and-scare films, just melodrama and implied gore. There’s plenty of car gore though, with the Bel...

Three new sets of crash-test results released late this week by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) appear to leave very little, if any, room for improvement. All three of these vehicles—the 2010 Dodge Journey, 2010 Lincoln MKT, and 2010 Mazda Mazda3—achieved top ratings in all the major categories and were named Top Safety Picks by the IIHS.

The Dodge Journey, a crossover vehicle that had been introduced for 2009, hadn’t yet been tested by the IIHS, so results apply to both 2009 and 2010. And they’re pretty much perfect across the board. The Journey SXT all-wheel-drive model tested got top ‘good’ scores in all three primary...

It’s official; as of January 1, 2010, the much-loved Sprinter van, made by Daimler, will once again have the three-pointed star in the U.S.—and be sold by Mercedes-Benz rather than Dodge.

Automotive News reports that the Sprinter will be sold by 120 appointed dealerships as part of Daimler Vans USA, a new entity that shares its corporate headquarters with M-B USA. Meanwhile, Freightliner franchises, which have sold Sprinters as well, will continue to do so, and the vans will still be built in South Carolina.

And if you’re thinking about a Sprinter, you might want to hold off until then; the model will be relaunched with the more modern...