Shoppers can have a little more confidence in the safety of this very affordable small car after the recent release of Federal New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) crash-test results for the Mirage. Overall, they’re reasonably good—including four-star results for all frontal crash subcategories and five stars in all areas of side-crash testing.
That includes a top five-star result in the side pole test, which simulates a 20-mph side impact with a narrow fixed object such as a utility pole, tree, or building corner.
Earlier this year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found the Mirage to be a top ‘good’ performer in most test categories—in all but the small overlap front test, where it was given the lowest ‘poor’ rating.
In the Mirage’s size class, there aren’t many top performers (there are actually a several models that achieve two- and three-star ratings in some categories), so relatively speaking, that puts it ahead of the class average. Only the Chevrolet Spark and Honda Fit have achieved the ‘acceptable’ or better ratings in small overlap necessary to be named a Top Safety Pick.
The 2015 Mitsubishi Mirage is one of the lowest-priced passenger vehicles in the U.S. market, and while we do rate vehicles against the models with which they’d be cross-shopped here at The Car Connection, it remains one of our lowest-rated vehicles. In a weeklong drive of the Mirage this last year, we found that it doesn’t measure up to today’s standards of refinement or performance, and its critical mass of inadequacies can’t mask out the sum of its positives.
Now against other low-priced minicar and subcompact models, you can more soundly count safety to be one of those positives.
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