BRIEFS - Countryman wins top safety award
Published:Sunday | March 13, 2011 | 12:00 AM
- Countryman wins top safety award
The Mini Cooper Countryman, a four-door small car, earns the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's (IIHS) top safety accolade after achieving good ratings for front, side, rollover, and rear-impact protection.
It is the first Mini to win, and the second model from BMW to achieve top results since the Institute tightened the criteria to include good performance for roof strength in rollover crashes (the other is the 2011 BMW 5 series). The roof of the Countryman withstood a force equal to nearly five times the car's weight. By comparison, the current federal standard is 1.5 times weight.
In addition to good crash-test ratings, winners must have electronic stability control (ESC), an important crash-avoidance feature, which is standard on the Countryman.
- 'Discovery 4' gets Best Luxury 4X4
Gaydon, Warwickshire:
The Land Rover Discovery 4 has scooped yet another award, being named 'Best Luxury 4x4' in the inaugural CarBuyer.co.uk awards.
The versatile seven-seat Discovery 4 features a powerful and highly efficient TDV6 3.0 litre diesel engine, fresh exterior identity and a premium cabin. The latest technologies such as Terrain ResponseTM offer class-leading dynamics both on and off-road.
The CarBuyer.co.uk awards judging panel reviewed and rated every new model on sale, focusing on performance, safety, running costs, mpg and overall customer satisfaction and reliability.