Japanese, Other Small Cars on Least-Safe List

Small two-door cars and Japanese models dominate the list of automobiles with the worst records of injury and vehicle damage in crashes, an insurance industry group said today.

The car rankings were made by the industry’s Highway Loss Data Institute covering 1982-1984 cars, based on insurance industry examination of damage and injury claims.

Small two-door cars generally had a worse loss record than larger cars, while large domestic models tended to have good statistics in both injury and damage categories, the institute said.

European cars, as a group, had a good injury record but bad vehicle damage results, the industry group said.

Large Proportion

“The cars with the bad injury experience are predominantly Japanese imports,” said Brian O’Neill, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Japanese-made vehicles, however, account for a large portion of small cars. For example, among 30 two-door small cars listed, 16 were Japanese.

O’Neill said that while size of the vehicle is a major factor in crash damage, “clearly there are engineering improvements that can be made to small cars (so) that they don’t have to be this bad. I think proof of that is the very good performance, for a small car . . . of the Saab 900.”

Mercedes, Chevrolet

Among small cars, the Mercedes-Benz 380 SL Coupe and the Chevrolet Corvette were listed as “substantially better than average” in injuries. “Better than average” were the Saab 900, Porsche 944 coupe and the Volkswagen Vanagon.

Eighteen small cars were listed as “substantially worse than average” and another 12 were listed as “worse than average” in overall injuries. Of those 30, 17 were Japanese.

The highest injury rating was attributed to the two-door Nissan Pulsar and the four-door Plymouth Colt (made by Mitsubishi).

Other two-door models with “substantially worse than average” injury ratings were: Pontiac 1000, Chevrolet Chevette, Mitsubishi Cordia, Dodge Colt, Plymouth Colt, Toyota Starlet, Renault Alliance, Nissan Sentra, Mercury Lynx and Dodge Charger.