Saab 9-3 Earns IIHS Top Honors
DETROIT -- The Saab 9-3 Sport Sedan has earned the 2007 Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Pick Award in the midsize car category. This is the third consecutive year that Saab has driven away from this American competition with top honors. For 2006 the 9-3 earned the Top Safety Pick - Gold Award and received a Double Best Pick crash test rating for 2005. The 2007 Saab 9-3 Sport Sedan was awarded the designation amid toughening criteria.
The Institute rates vehicles good, acceptable, marginal, or poor based on performance in high-speed front and side crash tests plus evaluations of seat/head restraints for protection against neck injuries. Winning vehicles must earn good ratings in all of the three of the previously described tests and, new for 2007, vehicles must also offer electronic stability control. Adrian Lund, IIHS president admits that with the added criteria it is tougher to win, however it was added with the overall goal to encourage more vehicle safety improvements.
"This is the Saab 9-3's second year to receive the IIHS Top Safety Pick award," said Adrian Lund, president of the IIHS. "Considering the criteria are tougher this year than last, the 9-3's accomplishment is impressive."
IIHS is a nonprofit research and communications organization funded by auto insurers. The Institute's research focuses on countermeasures aimed at all three factors in motor vehicle crashes (human, vehicular, and environmental) and on interventions that can occur before, during, and after crashes to reduce losses.
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