when people think about sports carperformance, safety ratings aren't the first thing to come to mind. so, for thefirst time, we've put a trio of iconic muscle cars through their paces to seeif they're as safe as more traditional cars. we tested the 2016 chevrolet camaro,the dodge challenger and the ford mustang. none of these vehicles earntop safety pick status. the mustang was redesigned for the 2015 model year, and it's just one rating away fromearning top safety pick status. if it just improved its small overlap crashperformance from acceptable to good, it would be there. it also earnsgood ratings in our four other
crashworthiness evaluations,and it has an available forward collision warning system to helpkeep you out of crashes in the first place. the dodge challenger wasn't up to the challengein the small overlap frontal crash test. the big problem was that this wheel was pushed back into the lower occupantcompartment, collapsing the footwell around the dummy's leg and foot. in fact, wehad to unbolt the dummy's foot from the leg in order to get the dummy out. a real driver wouldhave had serious leg injuries from this crash. the small overlap frontal crash test is especiallychallenging because only a small part of the vehicle's front end has to dealwith the energy of the crash.
this type of crash accounts for about 25% ofthe serious and fatal injuries in frontal impacts. the chevrolet camaro wasredesigned for 2016, and it stood out with a good performancein our small overlap frontal crash test. you can see that the safety cage waswell-maintained, and the injury measures on the driver dummy were all low. still, the camaro doesn't earn our top safety pick award because it earns only acceptable ratings forroof strength, and gm doesn't offer it with a frontcrash prevention system. given that sports cars have high crashrates, it's especially important that
they offer their occupants the best possible protection in a crash.