The Toyota Camry may be the best-selling midsize car in American but it did not live up to expectations when put through the new frontal crash test by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety this week.
The vehicle was one of two cars to receive the lowest possible score of "Poor," the other being the new Prius V model. The IIHS rates on a scale from Good, Acceptable, Marginal, and Poor according to the IIHS website. Over 13 different vehicles earned at least an Acceptable rating and three earns Marginal.
Click here to read the full IIHS press release.
The frontal test was created to test vehicles on how they are built to handle when the car crashes with another vehicle or object, such as a tree or guard rail. Testers set the vehicle to go approximately 40 mph before hitting a barrier.
"The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) periodically develops new, more severe or specialized tests which go beyond federal requirements," said Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons to The New York Times. "With this new test, the Institute has raised the bar again and we will respond to the challenge. We are evaluating the new test protocols and can say that there will not be one single solution to achieve greater crash performance in this area.
The test showed that the wheel of the car can be "forced back" into the footwell, which would cause it to interfere with the interior passenger compartment. This could potentially cause a serious injury or drastic damage to a passenger's foot or leg.
The frontal airbag system is also not set up properly after a test dummy's head hit the front panel even though both airbags did in fact deploy. This could cause injures to the head, neck, and chest areas according to the IIHS.
"Toyota engineers have a lot of work to do to match the performance of their competitors," said Adrian Lund, IIHS president in a press release.
Toyota has yet to reveal how the company plans on fixing the problems or if they intend to just release the vehicles as is. If they plan on selling a lot of units however, they may want to take a page out of their top competitors playbooks.
Ford and Nissan made significant structural changes to the 2013 models that were already in production after they failed to meet expectations in a test conducted by IIHS. Subaru and Volkswagen have also made airbag control changes after receiving negative scores as well in the past according to The New York Times.
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