Earlier today, website Motor1 published a list containing the names of every single “Top Safety Pick+” winner according to the testing from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), revealing something a bit startling: no Ford passenger vehicles have made the list.
We would leave it at that, were it not for the fact that we have two stories on our site – one from June of this year, and the other from September – which announce, separately, that the 2017 Ford Fusion and the 2017 Lincoln MKZ have each been named an IIHS Top Safety Pick+. And no, we’re not crazy; a quick internet search reveals articles from other publications corroborating this.
So what’s going on here? It seems as though both the Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ have had their Top Safety Pick+ status revoked, and been demoted to “Top Safety Picks” (without the plus sign) due to the effectiveness of their headlights. As Motor1 reports, 2017 is the first model year for which the IIHS is requiring “Good” or “Acceptable” headlights from all Top Safety Pick+ winners; the 2017 Fusion’s headlights have been rated “Poor,” while the MKZ’s units boast a “Marginal” rating.
On the plus side, both the 2017 Ford Fusion and 2017 Lincoln MKZ have received crash structure improvements so that they now have “Good” marks in all five crash-test categories. Previous models faltered in the small-overlap frontal crash test.
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