1998 Toyota Sienna commercial. It really was "simply the best" on safety.
It's probably not an exaggeration to say that the Toyota Sienna may have been the safest vehicle you could buy in 1998, short of a luxury vehicle costing at least twice as much.
At $21,255 (base price), the 1998 Sienna had a perfect IIHS offset rating, with IIHS calling it the "best performer ever" at the time, as well as a perfect 5-star rating for both driver and passenger in the NHTSA full frontal test. In terms of front crash protection, it didn't get better than this.
As for side-impact protection, the then nearly brand-new NHTSA side impact test was the only side impact crash test vehicles were rated for, and few vehicles truly did well in it. But the 1998 Sienna scored 4* (bordering on 5) stars for front-seat protection and 5 stars for rear-seat protection in that test.
This meant that the 1998 Sienna was the best performer ever recorded at the time in both the IIHS and NHTSA testing regimens. The first vehicle to make a full 5-star clean sweep of the NHTSA ratings was the 1999 Ford Windstar. But the '99 Windstar's performance in the IIHS offset was only Acceptable - meaning that, overall, it likely fell somewhat short of the Sienna's overall safety.
Would the 1998 Sienna pass modern crash test standards? No. It doesn't have the side curtain airbags necessary to pass the modern IIHS side-impact crash test. Like almost all pre-2010s vehicles, it was not designed for small overlap crashes. And myriad improvements in materials science mean that today's cars have much stronger body structures than the 1998 Sienna.
*To illustrate how close to a clean sweep of perfect scores the Sienna came, the one blemish - the 4-star front-seat side impact rating - was due to a Thoracic Trauma Index of 58. An index of 57 or lower meant 5 stars, and 58-71 meant 4.
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