The Chevrolet Spark was the only minicar out of 11 tested to earn an “acceptable” rating in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's small overlap front-crash test, which was introduced in 2012.
The test simulates what happens when the front corner of a car collides with another vehicle or a stationary object such as a tree—25 percent of a car's front end on the driver side strikes a five-foot-tall rigid barrier at 40 mph. The small overlap test is now part of IIHS' basic battery of tests.
The IIHS explains, “The test is more difficult than the head-on crashes conducted by the government or the longstanding IIHS moderate overlap test because most of the vehicle's front-end crush zone is bypassed. That makes it hard for the vehicle to manage crash energy, and the occupant compartment can collapse as a result.
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