Archive for the ‘Journey’ Category

The coveted Top Safety Pick designation from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) used to be quite exclusive—and a way for safety-conscious shoppers to narrow down their possibilities to a few top-rated vehicles in a segment. But since 2007, the number of Top Safety Picks has roughly doubled each year, going from just 23 vehicles then to 94 models—a huge portion of the new-car market—for 2009.

That’s slated to change beginning with 2010, as the IIHS requires that vehicles be rated ‘good’ in its new roof strength test in order to be named a Top Safety Pick.

The result—at least so far for 2010—is that the Institute’s 94...

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...

The good times for Hyundai keep on rolling: J.D. Power and Associates has given top marks in its Vehicle Launch Index to the 2009 Hyundai Genesis. The Index "quantifies how well new vehicle models -- including new entries to the market and all new redesigned models -- perform during the first eight months after launch." Among the many criteria that J.D. Power considers during the evaluation process are vehicle revenue, dealer gross profit, residual value, and data imported from the company's Initial Quality Study. In short, the Vehicle Launch Index offers a kind of holistic assessment of the vehicle, measuring how well it performs for the...