NHTSA Awards Five-Star Overall Safety Rating to 2020 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross

Mitsubishi knows that sports cars aren't selling all that well, but compact crossovers with sharp styling certainly do.

Even in saturated markets such as the United States of America, the Eclipse Cross is posting rather impressive results. The year-to-date sales are considerably better than those from 2018, yet Mitsubishi is nowhere near the likes of the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4.

In a bid to make the compact crossover that bit more attractive to prospective customers, Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. would like us to know that the Eclipse Cross has earned five stars for overall safety from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Eclipse Cross couldn't do better than four out of five stars in the driver's side frontal crash test. But on the upside, the passenger got the full five stars.

"The safety of our customers on the road is of the utmost importance to us, and receiving a five-star rating from NHTSA validates our engineers' efforts to design the highest level of quality and safety into every vehicle we build," declared Cason Grover, director of product planning. "Eclipse Cross continues to offer consumers an impressive combination of value, performance, and dependability, along with top-level safety scores."

Everyone knows that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has superior tests to the NHTSA, and for the 2019 model year, the Eclipse Cross missed out on the + in Top Safety Pick+ over the poor performance of the headlights. Depending on specification, the headlights were rated "acceptable" or "poor." That's a bit of a disappointment for Mitsubishi, more so because all crashworthiness tests have been passed with flying colors.

For the 2020 model year, the Eclipse Cross features increased availability of driving assistance. The SE and SEL trim levels now come as standard with Automatic High Beams, Lane Departure Warning, and Forward-Collision Mitigation. Also worthy of note, Mitsubishi offers 10 years or 100,000 miles of warranty for the powertrain along with five years or 60,000 miles of New Vehicle Limited Warranty.