U.S. crash tests show weaknesses in luxury cars

Only three of 11 mid-size luxury or near-luxury cars earned good or acceptable ratings in “small overlap” frontal crash tests based on recent testing by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

The Acura TL and Volvo S60 received good ratings, while the Infiniti G got an acceptable rating.

Of the remaining eight types of cars, four – the Acura TSX, BMW 3 series, Lincoln MKZ and Volkswagen CC – received marginal ratings, and four – the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Lexus IS 250/350 Audi A4 and Lexus ES 350 – got poor ratings. All of the cars are 2012 models.

“Nearly every new car performs well in other frontal crash tests conducted by the institute and the federal government, but we still see more than 10,000 deaths in frontal crashes each year,” IIHS president Adrian Lund says in a statement. “Small overlap crashes are a major source of these fatalities. This new test program is based on years of analyzing real-world frontal crashes and then replicating them in our crash test facility.”

In the test, 25% of a car’s front end on the driver side strikes a 5-foot-tall rigid barrier at 40 mph (64 km/h). A 50th percentile male Hybrid III dummy is belted in the driver seat. The IIHS notes that the test is designed to replicate what happens when the front corner of a car collides with another vehicle or an object like a tree or utility pole.