Subaru
The safety of our customers is of the utmost importance to Subaru. Subaru feels so strongly about this, we made the decision to include side curtain airbags as standard equipment on every 2005 Subaru Legacy and Outback.
We are pleased with the performance of the 2005 Subaru Legacy in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) frontal impact test, earning a “Good” rating and a “Best Pick” designation by the IIHS. However, during the original side impact protection test conducted by the IIHS, the side curtain airbag of the Subaru Legacy sedan did not deploy properly. Investigation revealed that, although designed and developed correctly, the side curtain airbags of 2005 Legacy and Outback sedan models were not builty to manufacturer specifications.
Following the first IIHS test, we immediately issued a stop sale order, recalled the 157 affected customer vehicles, and notified all owners, both by telephone and by mail, of this problem. As of this date, nearly all the vehicles have been corrected, with the remainder to be corrected at the customer’s convenience.
The IIHS allowed us the opportunity to re-test the 2005 Legacy with the proper specification side curtain airbag. This second test confirmed the manufacturer test results for proper deployment, and the side curtain provided good head protection.
Subaru appreciates the work of the IIHS, and shares its commitment to continue to improve the safety of the vehicles we producer.
Toyota
Thank you for the opportunity to once again express Toyota’s views on crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and particularly, the most recent test involving our 2004 RAV4.
As of this date we still have not had the opportunity to fully evaluate the test results from the IIHS and we have not seen the ratings. While Toyota is very interested in the results of IIHS and other third party tests, the RAV4, like all Toyota and Lexus products, meets or exceeds all federal government motor vehicle safety standards. Toyota conducts comprehensive crash tests on all of our vehicle models. This ongoing program consists of both dynamic and simulated tests and evaluations involving impacts at various angles and speeds to confirm performance in a variety of collision modes.