Consumer Reports magazine took three of Toyota Motor Corps cars off its recommendation list due to poor crash test results, Reuters reported.
The magazine said it will no longer recommend the Camry, Prius v model or RAV4 sport utility vehicle because of poor ratings in a crash test conducted last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, according to Reuters.
"We're a year into it, we've got over 50 vehicles tested and there's enough that are doing adequately on this test that now we're making the shift and pulling recommendations from any car that gets a poor rating," Jake Fisher, director of auto testing at Consumer Reports, said. "Honestly, we don't take this lightly, but virtually every vehicle now in the family sedan category has been tested and the only one that has gotten a 'poor' is the Camry.
"At this point, we don't feel we can continue to recommend people buy a Camry when there's other good choices out there that do better on the test," he said.
The IIHS, a non-profit group funded by the insurance industry, said they increased the standards of its test last year to include crashes that involve only a front corner of the vehicle, Reuters reported. The magazine waited to stop recommending the cars until it saw how the industry would be affected by the test results.
Last December, IIHS gave the Camry a "poor" rating, and told the engineers they had "a lot of work to do to match the performance of their competitors," according to Reuters. In the first nine months of the year, Camry was the third-most sold vehicle in the U.S., and its sales were up 1.3 percent.
Toyota have made changes to the Camry to improve its performance in the crash tests and IIHS is planning to retest the car in December, IIHS spokesman Russ Rader told Reuters. Toyota officials said on Monday they "are looking at a range of solutions" to address the car's performance in the crash test.
The IIHS test scores vehicles based on side, rear, roll-over and front-end crashes. Researchers added an overlap test because nearly because one-fourth of front-of-vehicle crashes involve a single corner that strikes another vehicle like a tree, or pole, Reuters reported.
Fisher also said 10 other vehicles were also dropped from the list, including Volkswagen's Audi A4 due to a "poor" rating on the IIHS test, as well, while others were due to overall quality of the vehicles and not related to crash test performance, Reuters reported.
The Subaru Forester SUV received the top reliability score for 2014, and Ford's Co' C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid received the worst score. Consumer Reports will also stop recommending the 2013 Honda Accord and Nissan Altima because they "scored too poorly" on reliability, Reuters reported.
According to Consumer Reports, the main problem area in the survey is the in-car electronics, and of the 17 categories tracked, the area had the most complaints, Reuters reported.
