Today IIHS released its crash test result for the 2015 VW GTI and Golf (they are essentially based on the same platform and share the same frame structure). They got “Good” result for all testing categories, which earns them the Top Safety Pick Plus rating.
The highlights of the result are in the small overlap front test and also the side impact test. For the small overlap test, unlike some cars that use the “trick” to slide over the test barrier, avoiding a direct impact to the car body to get a good result, the 2015 VW GTI directly hit the barrier. From the testing video we can see the GTI’s safety cage is very solid, withstand the impact force and has only very minor deformation.
The GTI/Golf has very good side impact result too. After the impact, the distance between the driver seat’s center line to the B pillar is 22cm (for your reference, the 2014 Volvo XC90 only has 9.5cm).
One interesting fact we also notice: both the 2015 VW Golf and Audi A3 sedan is based on the same VW MQB platform. The Audi A3 sedan also did very well in the IIHS test and got the Top Safety Pick+ rating. However, its side impact result is not as good as the Golf (only 17cm). In the test, both A3 and GTI has similar weight, therefore I suspect some sacrifices has been made during the design of the Audi A3.
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