Ford F-150 SuperCrew leads light-duty truck segment in safety ratings

(July 30, 2015) DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford’s all-new F-150 is the first pickup in America to earn an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Top Safety Pick for its SuperCrew model. The new F-150 is also the only full-size, light-duty truck in the industry to earn the government’s highest possible 5-star rating for the driver and passenger for all crash test modes and cab configurations — SuperCrew, SuperCab and Regular Cab.

Ford says the excellent crash test performance of the new Ford F-150 is enabled by its up to 700-pound weight savings through the use
of high-strength steel in the frame; high-strength, military-grade, aluminum alloy in the body; and smart engineering.

A cross-functional group comprised of Ford truck product development veterans and researchers worked to optimize vehicle weight savings and manufacturing design to deliver improved durability, capability, fuel economy and crashworthiness. The team created 31 safety-related innovations including new structures, materials and joining methods that were tested virtually with supercomputer simulations, then retested in Ford’s advanced laboratories to engineer the safest F-150 ever.

But IIHS said this week that not all F-150s are built the same way. After a highly unusual follow-up crash test, the IIHS has concluded that Ford “shortchanges” some buyers of its redesigned 2015 F-150 pickups by equipping certain models with protective steel bars while leaving them off others.

In separate crashes, a four-door crew cab F-150 SuperCrew aced IIHS’s tests and earned the safety agency’s coveted Top Safety Pick rating. But an extended cab SuperCab version of the F-150 received the second-lowest rating of “marginal,” Automotive News reported this week.

Why the difference? IIHS says it comes down to four protective steel bars that Ford installed on the SuperCrew that are left off the SuperCab. The tubular bars, welded to the frame and placed in the front wheel wells, also are missing from regular cab F-150s.

In an e-mailed response to questions from Automotive News, Ford spokesman Mike Levine said Ford will add "countermeasures to the SuperCab and Regular Cab for the 2016 model year. The type of countermeasure and structure will vary by cab type."

This spring, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration subjected all three cab versions of the F-150 to its own battery of crash tests. All three earned five stars, the federal agency’s highest rating, and the achievement features prominently in Ford’s F-150 marketing. NHTSA, however, does not conduct a test similar to the IIHS’s small-overlap test.

Source: Ford Motor Company, Automotive News