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Safety First: 2021 Hyundai Elantra, Santa Fe earn Top Safety Pick awards

IIHS trophies earned when the models are equipped with specific headlights

Matthew Guy
May 05, 2021  •  May 6, 2021  •  1 minute read  •  Join the conversation
2021 Hyundai Elantra
Photo by Derek McNaughton /Driving

The eggheads at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have handed the 2021 Hyundai Elantra and 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe their Top Safety Pick award for passing muster in a litany of tests.

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To qualify for the accolade, vehicles must earn ‘Good’ ratings – the highest possible score – in all six IIHS crashworthiness evaluations. These include the notoriously difficult to ace driver- and passenger-side small overlap front tests which cause a car to smack its headlight area into an immobile wall. This test flummoxes many cars thanks to the forces it imparts on a vehicle. It is indicative of a crash in which a car nails a bridge abutment, for instance, or a non-destructible bollard.

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Other crash tests include moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests. Cars must also be available with a front crash prevention system that earns advanced or superior ratings in both the vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian tests in order to earn the award. Critically, good- or acceptable-rated headlights must also be installed. This is why only the Limited trim of Elantra and Santa Fe got the award, plus the Calligraphy trim in Santa Fe.

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Alert readers will note those trim levels are American trims. The top-tier Ultimate trim is the Canadian equivalent on Elantra; look for the snazzy Ultimate Calligraphy if shopping Santa Fe in this country.

There is one higher IIHS award level to which car manufacturers aspire, and that’s the Top Safety Pick+ award. To earn it, a model must have headlights rated Good or Acceptable as standard across its line regardless of trim level. In this instance, lower trims of the Elantra and Santa Fe come with headlight designs that did not achieve those coveted ratings. This is not to say they are the equivalent of fireflies in jam jars but rather simply don’t meet a particular measure in the stringent IIHS rating.

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