Outlander And Escape Fall Short In Latest IIHS Crash Tests

The IIHS is 100% about being able to justify higher insurance rates on vehicle covered by the owners of the IIHS i.e.the insurance industry.

More crossovers are selling, so finding a way to gouge customers with higher insurance rates equals more profit.

This is criminal collusion.

Ford struggles with all their smaller vehicles. There are too Top Safety Picks to not make it a purchase requirement.

Indeed. And it's because they were lazy and the products are OLD.

The Focus went into production in 2010, but it was largely a Generation 2, European Focus that was restyled. Thus, it's really ancient (14 years).

That platform produced the Kuga which in turn became the current Escape...ancient.

The Fusion (CD4) is largely a restyled EUCD aka CD3 Fusion, so it's an old platform too.

The EcoSport is based on the just-discontinued Fiesta, so it's old.

Mulally was brilliant in repurposing platforms for Ford's plan to avoid bankruptcy, but they did not immediately plow that money into clean-sheet platforms.

I'm wondering whether the new Focus is truly all new or is it another Hail Mary based on the Global C platform morphed into the C2 platform.

The Continental is referred to by some as CD"5" and is definitely a Hail Mary car. Thus, the cancellation of the CD4/5 is a very good thing. I'm guessing that the needs of EVs were not that compatible with re-enginnering the re-engineering of the EUCD once again.

There has still been NO STUDY of verified comparison that actually links results from these so called unbiased Tests with real world results - and that is easy to understand. IT is highly unlikely that one would ever be involved in such a collision - in real life.

In fact - Insurance companies do not use these studies to set rates except on new cars that do not have much real life data. Once there IS real life data - they really must use that since it can be supported in court -where these tests generally are harder to justify

@TomM you're idiotic as usual.

The major insurance companies "underwrite" the IIHS and that is a fancy word for "own". There would be no purpose for the insurance industry to own the IIHS and pay for its operation and then do absolutely nothing with the data produced.

None of you guys get it. The Insurance Co's fund the IIHS to do these tests because they want to make cars and SUV's safer for people. Why? Because safer cars mean people get less hurt or not hurt at all which reduces payouts. A big insurance company could pay as much as $2.5B year in settlements. Only $500M of that total is car parts and repairs. The rest is injury, healthcare and rehabilitation related and legal fees related to such. If nobody gets hurt, they pay out less and make more much money. It's good business, not a conspiracy.

That's how they justify the higher rates to socialists. So tell me why cars simultaneously get safer and also more expensive to insure. I mean, if your thesis is correct, insurance rates should be plummeting. They aren't.