Convertibles Earn High Marks in Safety Crash Testing

Of the 10 convertible models tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, five earned “good” scores for front- and side-impact crashes. The Saab 9-3 and Volvo C70 earned a "top safety pick" award, the Detroit Free Press reports. To award its top grade, the institute required a model to come with some form of roll bar in case of rollovers, a feature usually found only on European models. The institute said it wanted to test convertibles due to their growing popularity. The institute cautioned that convertibles were inevitably more dangerous than hardtops; death rates in convertibles tend to equal those of regular models, but convertibles tend to rack up fewer miles. The group also found that price didn't correlate with high rankings. While the top two models were luxury cars, the Sebring and the Mitsubishi Eclipse outperformed the BMW 3-Series and Audi A4.