Skip to footer

Which small cars are the best in the market?

The Honda Civic scores rave reviews — the Nissan Sentra, not so much.

|
Paul Sancya/AP/File
A 2013 Honda Civic is shown in Detroit, Ill. in 2012. The Honda Civic was rated one of the best small cars available, according to Ingram.
  • By Antony Ingram Contributor

It's not hard to see why small cars have increased in popularity over the last decade or so.

Always popular among some buyers for their gas-saving abilities, today's small cars are also now quicker, more comfortable, better-equipped and safer than ever before.

IIHS has been discovering just how safe in its latest wave of testing, and it's good and bad news for models in the small car market.

The best news is reserved for Honda, whose Civic and Civic coupe earned the maximum Good rating in IIHS's strict small offset frontal crash tests. The small offset test puts the impact's maximum force through just a small area of a car's structure, and really separates the safest cars from those that need more work.

The 2013 Kia Soul and 2014 Kia Forte received 'Poor' ratings in this offset test, with body and dashboard intrusion and a worrying tendency for the driver's head to slide off the airbag and impact upon the car's structure.

Nissan's 2013 Sentra also scored poorly, but all received a Top Safety Pick rating overall due to Good scores in front, side, rollover and rear impact tests.

Better--but not great--were the Chevrolet Cruze and Sonic, and the Volkswagen Beetle. All received a 'Marginal' rating in the small offset test, but all again scored a Top Safety Pick rating overall.

The IIHS's highest honor, a Top Safety Pick+ rating, was awarded to the two Civics, as well as the Dodge Dart, Ford Focus sedan, Hyundai Elantra and Scion tC. The latter four vehicles all received an 'Acceptable' rating in the small offset test.

The upshot of all this crash testing is that virtually every small car on sale is now competent enough in most impact tests to receive a Top Safety Pick rating from the IIHS--though most haven't yet been rated in the small offset tests.

That's good news for small car buyers, who really can enjoy the benefits of gas-sipping vehicles with better-than-ever standards of safety.

And if you want the best in the class? The 2013 Honda Civic, also available as a 44 mpg hybrid, should be your own top pick. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Which small cars are the best in the market?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2013/0809/Which-small-cars-are-the-best-in-the-market
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe