Saabs Earns IIHS “Top Safety Pick” for its 9-4X and 9-5, Which could be Useful if it had Any to Sell...

Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony: the line spoken by Morpheus in the first (and, arguably, best) movie of The Matrix trilogy certainly fits Saab’s case tighter than spandex pants.
The U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has awarded the 9-4X crossover and the 9-5 sedan a “Top Safety Pick”, its highest rating for crashworthiness.
The IIHS tests include front impact (offset) and side impact crashes. Seat/head restraints are also tested in a simulated rear-end impact to assess the mitigation of whiplash injuries and the roof structure is tested to assess a vehicle rollover crash.
“Saab Automobile prides itself on its ability to create vehicles which focus on the safety of the driver and its passengers in real-life situations”, said Per Lenhoff, Head of Safety Development at Saab Automobile. “It is rewarding to be recognized by IIHS for a Top Safety Pick award for two of our newest products.”
Now, if only the Swedish carmaker, which awaits next week’s court hearing to learn if it will continue to exist, had any cars to deliver, or could at least convince GM to lend it its technology or allow Saab to continue building the 9-4X, it would really make for a nice thing to put in its ads…

Shocker: Crash Tests Reveal that Most Cars Sold in Latin America are Deathtraps on Wheels

Shocker: Crash Tests Reveal that Most Cars Sold in Latin America are Deathtraps on Wheels

The FIA Foundation announced the results of the first ever crash tests carried out by the Latin New Car Assessment Program (Latin NCAP), and the news isn’t good for consumers and automakers alike. Actually, the crash test results reveal a terrifying reality: most of the best selling cars in Latin America’s emerging markets offer minimal or no protection at all to their adult occupants let alone children...
Max Mosley, president of Global NCAP, said: “The latest results of the Latin NCAP reveal that South America’s most popular cars are still about 20 years behind the levels of safety enjoyed in Europe and North America. This cannot be acceptable.”
"We want to see the UN’s global crash test standards applied to all new cars across the world. And we want consumers to be aware of the life and death choices they make when buying a new car," Mosley added.
The 64 km/h (40 mph) frontal impact crash tests revealed that most of the cars that were tested suffered from poor structural rigidity which, along with the absence of airbags in most of them, “awarded” them an unheard-of, in the 21st century, one-star rating!
This kind of performance is indeed scary, especially when compared to models sold to the European and North American markets, where the top five-star rating for every new model, save for ultra compacts which usually score four stars, is the norm.
Whereas in North America and Europe safety agencies constantly upgrade their requirements, in most Latin American countries safety regulations are virtually non-existent.
A measure of the work that needs to be done is the fact that Argentina and Brazil will make airbags mandatory by 2014 – and that, sadly, is hailed as a sign of progress.

Published By: Carscoop

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