We Watched Subaru Crash the 2019 Ascent

The ad shows a series of cars arriving at various junkyards as the tow truck operator gives his colleagues a heartfelt look and says “they lived.” Me and my friends found the ad a bit humorous and ended up repeating the phrase for days to come, sarcastically saying “they lived” any time one of us made even the smallest of errors.

We may have turned Subaru’s emotional commercial into a bit of a running joke, but unlike me and my miscreant friends, the Japanese automaker is very serious about safety. Six of the automaker’s products achieved the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s coveted Top Safety Pick+ rating for 2018 and the automaker is obsessed with ensuring all of its models eventually achieve the highest possible ratings from both the IIHS and the National Highway Safety Administration.

Subaru’s recent success in IIHS testing gave it so much confidence that the test of the 2019 Ascent would go well that it invited me and a handful of other journalists out to watch one of the crash tests go down live. This would be quite a big deal for safety conscious Subaru. Not only is the Ascent the largest Subaru ever and thus a bit of a new avenue for the brand, but it’s an extremely important product in today’s automotive landscape. Americans are all about the three-row crossover right now, so Subaru’s got to get this one right.

SEE ALSO: 2019 Subaru Ascent Review

Subaru splits its approach to safety up into four pillars: primary safety, passive safety, active safety and preventative safety. Primary safety relates to the design and visibility, while passive safety includes the design of the body structure and its strength. Preventative safety covers aspects that prevent injury in the event of a collision, like airbags for example, while active safety includes tech like automatic brake assist and lane departure warning. The automaker is hoping this approach will net the Ascent a Top Safety Pick+ rating, and things do sound quite good on paper.

The primary safety side of things is obvious when you look at the Ascent. Subaru is often chastised for its yawn-inducing designs, but the automaker keeps its styling simple for one very good reason: visibility and overall safety. Its cars are designed to be easy to see out first and foremost, in addition to being easy to drive and easy to park.

“With every Subaru it’s form following function,” explained Subaru car line manager Evan Lindsey during our IIHS visit. “We have tall greenhouses, we’ve got a lot of glass so there is excellent visibility all around. And again, that design, when you have a taller greenhouse it creates a vehicle that’s safer but also a vehicle that’s easier to drive, easier to maneuverer when you’re parking, you have more confidence behind the wheel.”

Covering the passive safety aspect is the new Subaru Global Platform (SGP). The platform is also used in the current Impreza, but it’s been heavily revised for the three-row Ascent. The platform gets more robust cross section framework for the Ascent, along with more structural adhesive in key areas and more high-tensile steel. Ensuring this elongated version of SGP was robust enough was a difficult task for Subaru’s engineers. They still went above and beyond, however, developing their own in-house crash test to ensure that third-row occupants stay safe in the event of a major rear end collision. SGP is also quite talented in regards to handling – another important factor in building safe cars. After all, the safest type of crash is the one that never happens.

SEE ALSO: 2019 Subaru Forester Review

“Speaking with the engineers, this is one of the most challenging projects that they worked on and for a variety of reasons,” Lindsey said. “One is the structure of the vehicle, you want to make it as strong as possible, but you’ve got a vehicle that’s larger, it’s heavier, so you’ve got more forces involved if you get into a crash. But then there’s also the packaging element, so you want a vehicle where on the inside there’s lots of space for the occupants but isn’t too big on the outside and doesn’t have a gigantic footprint so it’s easier to maneuver and easier to drive.”

“And then from a handling perspective as well, the body control,” he added. “So you want to make sure in an emergency situation the vehicle handles well and can avoid collisions. So it’s designing a vehicle that can combine all that attributes and those elements, making it fun to drive but also as safe as possible.”

Preventative safety is always important and as such, the Ascent has seven airbags as standard. However the automaker hopes its standard active safety system, Subaru Eyesight, can make it so preventative safety measures never have to be deployed. The camera-based system includes adaptive cruise control with stop and go, lane keep assist, lane departure warning, pre-collision throttle management and pre-collision braking. With these technologies, Subaru wants to greatly reduce the risk of you getting into a crash and make it so you never get to test out just how safe that SGP platform really is. That’s the IIHS’s job.

And what a job it is. Seeing a crash test live is sobering, no matter how safe the vehicle is. The impact is deafeningly loud, pummeling you in the chest with a sudden thud. Silence fills the room directly after the crash as our group gives each other a half shocked and half disturbed look before heading down to inspect the damage up close. It’s a bit of a disturbing experience, even if you know crash test dummies are the only thing in danger, and watching one live will leave you thankful that Subaru, and the good folks who work at the IIHS, do what they do.

As for the results, the Ascent did end up achieving a Top Safety Pick+ rating – giving Subaru its seventh TSP+ award for 2018. The SUV earned the best-possible rating of ‘good’ across the board in the IIHS testing and was also lauded for its standard frontal crash prevention system, which was rated ‘superior’. The IIHS wasn’t a fan of the SUV’s base halogen headlamps, however, saying they “provide inadequate visibility and also create excessive glare for drivers of oncoming vehicles.” We wouldn’t be surprised if Subaru makes the optional LEDs standard for the 2020 model year. After all, if it can improve driver safety and safety ratings, Subaru will likely do it.

Subaru may have achieved its goal with the 2019 Ascent, but its engineers have no time to celebrate. Next up in IIHS testing is the new-for-2019 Subaru Forester – another important vehicle that has the potential to make Subaru a boatload of money. It’s a family vehicle much like the Ascent, so the engineers will again have paid extra close attention to safety. And thanks to them, one lucky person may one day walk away from a major crash in one, giving their family the chance to say “they lived.”