2014 Mitsubishi Lancer Lauded as Top Safety Pick

mitsubishi lancer EVO

The 2014 Mitsubishi Lancer recently became a Top Safety Pick of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), after achieving passing grades in all of the Institute’s crash-test evaluations: Mitsu’s compact sedan earned “good” scores, which are the highest presented, in the IIHS tests for moderate-overlap impacts, side impacts, roof strength, and performance of head restraints and seats; the 2015 Mitsubishi Lancer also received an “acceptable” result in the Institute’s highly challenging small front-overlap test.

That latter evaluation, as a reminder, looks to what happens if a vehicle runs into a slender obstacle like a tree or pole, and then endures the kind of off-center impact that can miss most of a typical car's front-crash prevent hardware.

And while the Top Safety Pick prize doesn’t happen to cover the performance-oriented 2014 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart or Evolution models, it does apply to the 2015 sedans that will launch this summer with some important content reconfigurations; see http://www.autobytel.com/mitsubishi/lancer/news/new-content-highlights-2015-mitsubishi-lancer-125100/.

"It is great to see our very popular Mitsubishi Lancer once again named as a ‘Top Safety Pick’ by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety," said Don Swearingen, executive vice president of Mitsubishi Motors North America. "Lancer is a versatile compact sports sedan that has an exceptional degree of safety, excellent fuel economy, sporty performance and plentiful standard features all at price to fit almost any budget."

Note: The 2014 Mitsubishi Lancer doesn’t offer a high-tech, frontal crash-prevention system, so it wasn’t eligible for the IIHS Top Safety Pick+ honor.

The same also was the case for the Mitsubishi Outlander Sport, another of the brand’s Top Safety Picks, but the Mitsubishi Outlander did earn the “+” designation, thanks to Mitsu’s available Forward Collision Mitigation technology.