Archive for the ‘Malibu’ 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...

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...

A couple of months ago, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety conducted fender-bender tests on a handful of minicars and subcompacts. The results weren't encouraging, with most scoring poorly, and only a few landing in the "acceptable" range. Now, the IIHS has conducted a second battery of tests -- this time on midsize sedans -- and unfortunately, the majority of those underperformed expectations, too.

Models tested included the 2009 Honda Accord, the 2009 Hyundai Sonata, the 2009 Mazda 6, and 2009 Nissan Maxima. According to the IIHS, each of those models showed improvement over its 2007 version, but none earned a rating of "good",...