DETROIT (AP) – Ford’s new aluminum-sided F-150 pickup saw mixed results in new crash tests by the insurance industry, and the damaged trucks cost more to repair than steel-bodied ones.
The four-door Super Crew version of the 2015 F-150 got top ratings in all five of the crash tests performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. For now, it is the only full-size truck on the market with the institute’s “Top Safety Pick” rating.
But the Super Cab version, which has a smaller rear door and back seat, did poorly in a small front overlap test, which slams 25 percent of the front of the truck into a barrier at 40 miles per hour. It didn’t earn the top safety award.
The Insurance Institute also said it took longer for a local Ford dealer to repair the aluminum truck than an older steel one, and the aluminum parts cost more. The institute said the repair costs were 26 percent higher for the aluminum-bodied truck.
In a statement, Ford said the new truck is the “safest F-150 ever” and noted that it has the government’s highest five-star safety rating. But the company said it will make a design change in the 2016 model year to improve the crash performance of the Super Cab and Regular Cab models.