Our buying decisions are often shaped by how a vehicle looks on the outside, when how the world looks from the inside of a car or SUV is arguably far more important.
Carmakers can load up their vehicles with hundreds of electronic safety features but if you can’t see past roof pillars the size of an elephant’s leg, those cars are less safe and less relaxing to drive than they should be.
Pillars have grown since the 1970s to make cars stronger, but some automakers do a better job than others of integrating that strength while still ensuring pedestrians, cyclists and other cars are still visible at all times from the driver’s seat.
To let buyers know which new cars are the visibility villains, and which are the heroes, Consumer Reports ranked the best and worst cars in each market sector, from basic subcompacts to luxury midsized SUVs.
Related: Consumer Reports Has Serious Safety Concerns With Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta
The visibility assessments come from the “driving position” section of CR’s regular road tests on each vehicle, but this is the first time the ratings have been assembled in one place.
Some market segments, including minivans and large SUVs, weren’t ranked because Consumer Reports’ testers didn’t find sufficient differences between competing models. But in other sectors there were huge differences between the good and the bad.
CR’s results showed that generally speaking, sedans have much better visibility than the SUVs that are increasingly replacing them. But it gave special praise to the Subaru Forester, finding its visibility was “vastly superior” to its rivals.
In fact two more Subarus, the WRX and the Legacy were rated best in class, while Honda also scored three “bests” with the Fit, Passport and Pilot, but ranks less well than Subaru overall because the Clarity was ranked the worst midsize sedan.
Nissan, meanwhile featured twice on the “worst” list with the Murano and Pathfinder, as did Chevrolet. That the Camaro and its pillbox slit windows fared badly was no surprise, but the little Spark also struggled.
Whats cars have you driven that would justify a “worst” rating by CR’s testers?