IIHS: two thousand fifteen Ford F-150 Crash Tests Expose Disparate Results Inbetween Bod Styles – News – Car and Driver, Car and Driver Blog
IIHS: two thousand fifteen Ford F-150 Crash Tests Expose Disparate Results Inbetween Team Cab and Extended Cab
The Ford F-150 aced a suite of crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and earned the nonprofit group’s “Top Safety Pick” rating. Of note, however, is that the honor was bestowed only to the SuperCrew bod style, the bestselling version of the truck.
The four-door SuperCrew passed all five tests with the highest-possible “good” rating. The reason? Ford installs steel members fore and aft of the front wheel wells (in yellow, below) to prevent those wheels from intruding into the cabin space, but the company doesn’t fit them to SuperCab or regular-cab bods.
During the IIHS frontal-small-overlap test, which simulates hitting a pole or a car head-on by contacting twenty five percent of a vehicle’s frontal area at forty mph, the SuperCrew’s assets box remained “largely intact” with a “low risk of injuries,” the group said. The smaller F-150 SuperCab pickup (pictured at top) scored “marginal” due to “significant intrusion” of the passenger cabin, as the dashboard and steering wheel came “unsafely close” to the dummy’s chest. Since the A-pillars buckled and other figure components “gravely compromised the driver’s survival space,” the IIHS rated this F-150’s structure as “poor,” which is below “marginal” and the group’s worst rating. Vehicles have to earn “good” or “acceptable” ratings in all tests to qualify as a Top Safety Pick.
“That shortchanges buyers who might pick the extended cab thinking it offers the same protection in this type of crash as the squad cab,” said David Zuby, the Institute’s chief research officer. “It doesn’t.”
An Automotive News report on the differing structures published in June prompted the IIHS to test two F-150 bod styles instead of the single most popular variant, as it does for every other car it tests. While it’s not unusual to see cars with varying crash structures in the U.S. versus overseas—the U.S. has its own roof-crush standards, as well as other more stringent rules including those for side-curtain airbags—it’s the very first time the IIHS has witnessed such divergent results for one U.S.-specified car model. As a result, the IIHS says it’s planning to crash-test several assets styles of other full-size pickups this year, and it is investigating whether other manufacturers also are reinforcing vehicle trims it knows the IIHS will test.
Ford responded to Automotive News by telling that it will add “countermeasures” to two thousand sixteen regular-cab and extended SuperCab F-150s, telling the publication that “the type of countermeasure and structure will vary by cab type.” In a statement to Car and Driver, Ford says, “We addressed the IIHS puny overlap front crash in our high-volume SuperCrew very first, which accounts for eighty three percent of two thousand fifteen F-150 retail sales. We are adding countermeasures in the SuperCab and the regular cab in the two thousand sixteen model year. Based on the IIHS data, both vehicles suggest similar occupant protection levels [as the SuperCrew]. The F-150 program was well under way when this test was introduced in 2012. We are evaluating which specific switches we will make to the SuperCab and regular cab. It is significant that any switches do not compromise spectacle on other crash tests.”
In AN’s June story, Ford said, “We optimize each cab structure based on many factors including cab style, mass, wheelbase, powertrain, and driveline to meet regulatory requirements and achieve public-domain ratings.” Those “public-domain ratings” were clarified by Ford in this week’s AN report to be “crash testing.”
The small-overlap crash test, very first introduced in 2012, compelled automakers to quickly adopt switches after the IIHS exposed that most fresh cars—including luxury sedans—weren’t strong enough to prevent significant injuries in this common accident type. Toyota, for example, launched a 2014.Five model-year Camry that specifically addressed the bod structure in relation to the test, and other manufacturers made similar improvements as quickly as the following model year.
This story was updated to include Ford’s statement to C/D regarding deeds it plans to take to update the SuperCab and regular cab F-150 models for 2016.
