Modern Muscle Cars Aren’t Quite As Safe As You’d Think

The Mustang, Challenger and Camaro all missed out on the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's top safety ratings, with two struggling with the challenging overlap tests
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Since sports cars tend to be driven enthusiastically, it’s important they’re as safe as possible. However, a trio of modern muscle cars - a Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Dodge Challenger - all missed out on the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) top safety ratings.

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To nab the IIHS’ ‘Top Safety Pick’, a car needs a ‘good’ rating in the small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restrain tests, and have some kind of front crash prevention system. The Mustang came closest, but was let down by an ‘acceptable’ rating in the small overlap test, where the roof buckled and the A-pillar plus instrument panel intruded into the cockpit.

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The Camaro fared much better in the small overlap, but it scored only ‘acceptable’ in the roof strength test, and doesn’t have any front crash prevention tech.

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The Challenger - the oldest of the trio - performed the worst, scoring ‘acceptable’ for roof strength and the head restraints, and only ‘marginal’ in the small overlap.

So in other words, room for improvement with all three cars…

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Comments

Anonymous

Itd be nice to see the Challenger in the sametest as the other two. That was 35mph but the impact was more on the front hitting the bumper gaurd instead of shearing past that down the fender like the other two.

05/24/2016 - 14:45 |
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Modern Muscle Cars Aren’t Quite As Safe As You’d Think
MuhV8

Muscle cars aren’t supposed to be safe

05/24/2016 - 14:56 |
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Anonymous

Complete waste of time. A wall is way harder than a crowd

05/24/2016 - 15:27 |
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[Flux]

So what if these cars didn’t pass tests? These tests wouldn’t be needed if people were better drivers.

05/24/2016 - 15:30 |
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Ben Anderson 1

and doesn’t have any front crash prevention tech.

This, to me, is why crash tests have become heavily biased toward companies with bottomless pits of cash to throw at electronic toys (I’m looking at you, Germany).

The point of crash tests is to see how not-dead you’ll be WHEN YOU CRASH. Screw your forward collision detection because that’s not going to stop the A-Pillars from caving in when you smash into a concrete wall.

05/24/2016 - 15:55 |
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Yeah I agree this is an issue. It should be about who makes the prevention tech STANDARD. The germans offer it but will never make it standard on their cars. Hell BMW charges extra for xenon lights on the new X3 and X5.

05/24/2016 - 22:49 |
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Anonymous

For the Camaro, low roof strength? So I will die if I rollover one then?

05/24/2016 - 16:05 |
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Eric Wang

The Mustang came closest. At least Ford knew their Mustangs crash into the crowds all the time. So they made their car a little safer than other muscle cars for crashing into the crowds.

05/24/2016 - 16:06 |
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Anonymous

That’s because the mustang was intended for crashing into crowds, not walls

05/24/2016 - 16:10 |
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mikael

What I’m getting from these offset crash tests is to hit stuff straight on .

05/24/2016 - 16:21 |
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Anonymous

According the IIHS, the 2011 camaro has a death rate of 60 for single car accidents. It’s probably safe to assume that’s a trend for all of these pony cars since people tend to do stupid stuff. Hopefully somebody recognizes we don’t need fancy lane detection, family SUV safety nonsense but do need more safety features for a good old wall-plowing.

05/24/2016 - 17:06 |
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