Toyota Motor Corp's Camry, the best-selling mid-size car in the U.S., and the Prius V hybrid earned the lowest ratings in a new crash test simulating a severe front-end collision, an insurance group found.

The two Toyotas received the only “poor” scores on an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety test intended to evaluate a crash in which the front corner of a vehicle collides with another car, a tree or a pole. It is more stringent than the U.S. government’s test, which simulates a collision in which two vehicles or objects meet head on.

Toyota engineers have a lot of work to do to match the performance of their competitors,” Adrian Lund, the insurance group’s president, said in a statement.

The insurance-industry funded group, based in Arlington, Virginia, said it introduced its so-called small-overlap test this year because that type of accident accounts for almost a fourth of frontal crashes that seriously injure or kill people in front seats.

“With this new test, the institute has raised the bar again and we will respond to the challenge,” Brian Lyons, a Toyota spokesman, said in an e-mail. “We are evaluating the new test protocols and can say that there will not be one single solution to achieve greater crash performance in this area.”

Test results showed mid-size cars such as Honda Motor Co.’s Accord and Suzuki Motor Corp.’s Kizashi that had “good” ratings performed better than most comparable luxury models.
The insurance group released scores for mid-size luxury cars in August, finding most of the 11 models scored “marginal” or “poor” in the new test.

For full article, click here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-20/t...crash-test.html

If US also like that, Those Camry / Prius in Malaysia i really no eye see

This post has been edited by Myoswee: Dec 20 2012, 03:17 PM

A friend of mine once told me

Either you are fxxxx rich or fxxxx stupid to buy a foreign brand in Malaysia

Just found out in US a V6 Camry 10 air bags selling for USD 30k.