On the flip side, Steve Young suffered a bunch of concussions that ended his career, and Bryant Young suffered a grotesque leg injury on MNF…

It’s just a name. Sometimes Japanese companies choose English names that just don’t really have much meaning other than (to them) sounding good, but are actually kind of awkward. Pocari Sweat, EarthDreams, Skyactiv, or my favorite, the Suzuki Every JoyPop Turbo.

Edit: I forgot about the Isuzu Mysterious Utility Wizard

They did drop one rating down; can’t win ‘em all I suppose. That said, they still show a strong track record of not shitting the bed every time there’s a new test, which isn’t something most other automakers can say.

I think on the contrary most cars and designed for the current tests, and not much more. Volvo is an exception to the rule, but that’s also because what differentiates Volvo is that singular focus on safety.

Case in point, almost all cars received Poor or Marginal scores when the small overlap test was introduced, and then a bunch more received Poor or Marginal scores when they started testing the passenger side. Same story for the updated side impact test, and the updated moderate overlap test.

Whenever an automaker makes a quick fix like this, I always wonder how much safer the car really is. It now gets an Acceptable rating when hit by the 37mph 4200lb sled, but how much additional headroom did the engineers leave in? Does the rating still hold up when the test parameters are changed slightly, like if the sled is going 40mph, or if it’s 500lb heavier?