Sixty-six vehicles have drawn the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Pick award for 2011, including 40 cars, 25 SUVs and a minivan. Hyundai/Kia and Volkswagen/Audi each have nine winners for 2011. 

Next in line with eight awards apiece are General Motors, Ford/Lincoln, and Toyota/Lexus/Scion. Subaru is the only manufacturer with a winner in all the vehicle classes in which it competes. 

The Top Safety Pick award recognizes vehicles that do the best job of protecting people in front, side, rollover and rear crashes based on ratings in IIHS crash tests. Winners also must have available electronic stability control. 

Here are all 66 winners. (Bold-face italic indicates newly announced winners for 2011.) 

Large Cars

• Buick LaCrosse

• Buick Regal

• BMW 5 series (except 4-wheel drive and V8)

• Cadillac CTS sedan

• Ford Taurus

• Hyundai Genesis

• Infiniti M37/M56 (except M56x 4-wheel drive)

• Lincoln MKS

• Mercedes E classcoupe

• Mercedes E class sedan

• Toyota Avalon 

• Volvo S80

Midsize Cars

• Audi A3

• Audi A4 sedan

• Chevrolet Malibu

• Chrysler 200 4-door

• Dodge Avenger

• Ford Fusion

• Hyundai Sonata

• Kia Optima

• Lincoln MKZ 

• Mercedes C class

• Subaru Legacy 

• Subaru Outback

• Volkswagen Jettasedan

• Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen

• Volvo C30

Small cars

• Chevrolet Cruze

• Honda Civic 4-door models (except Si) with optional electronic stability control

• Kia Forte sedan

• Kia Soul

• Mitsubishi Lancer sedan (except 4-wheel drive)

• Nissan Cube

• Scion tC

• Scion xB 

• Subaru Impreza sedan and hatchback (except WRX)

• Toyota Corolla

• Volkswagen Golf 4-door

• Volkswagen GTI4-door

Minicar

• Ford Fiesta sedan and hatchback built after July 2010

Minivan

• Toyota Sienna

Large SUV

• Volkswagen Touareg

Midsize SUVs

• Audi Q5

• Cadillac SRX

• Chevrolet Equinox 

• Dodge Journey

• Ford Explorer

• Ford Flex

• GMC Terrain

• Hyundai Santa Fe

• Jeep Grand Cherokee

• Kia Sorento built after March 2010

• Lexus RX

• Lincoln MKT

• Mercedes GLK

• Subaru Tribeca

• Toyota Highlander

• Toyota Venza 

• Volvo XC60

• Volvo XC90

Small SUVs

• Honda Element

• Hyundai Tucson 

• Jeep Patriot with optional side torso airbags

• Kia Sportage

• Subaru Forester

• Volkswagen Tiguan

Looking Deeper at the 2011 Data

The ratings, IIHS said, help consumers pick vehicles that offer a higher level of protection than federal safety standards require. 

Last year IIHS toughened criteria for Top Safety Pick by adding a requirement that all qualifiers must earn a "good" rating -- the highest rating given -- for performance in a roof strength test to assess protection in a rollover crash. The move sharply narrowed the initial field of 2010 winners. At the beginning of the 2010 model year, only 27 vehicles qualified for the award, but the number grew to 58 as auto manufacturers reworked existing designs and introduced new models. Now another 10 vehicles have joined the winners' list for 2011. Two discontinued models dropped off. 

"Safety is a priority among this crop of winners," IIHS President Adrian Lund said. "From the start these manufacturers set out to design vehicles that would earn Top Safety Pick, even though we've made it harder to win." 

One of them is Ford. For 2011, the automaker is rolling out a new design for its popular Explorer midsize SUV, which until now had never drawn Top Safety Pick. Ford also upgraded the roofs of two other midsize SUVs, the Ford Flex and Lincoln MKT, along with the Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ, two midsize cars that missed the initial round of 2010 winners because, according to IIHS, they lacked the required roof strength. 

The all-new Ford Fiesta rounds out Ford's winners and is the only minicar to earn Top Safety Pick this year.

General Motors' new Chevrolet Cruze broadens the number of award-winning options for those looking to buy a fuel-efficient small car. GM built the Cruze, which has 10 standard airbags including ones for the knees, to outperform the government's minimum roof strength requirements.

The redesigned Volkswagen Touareg is the only large SUV to earn Top Safety Pick for 2011. IIHS doesn't normally evaluate SUVs this large, but Volkswagen requested crash tests to demonstrate the Touareg's crashworthiness. 

None of the small pickups the institute has evaluated qualified for this year's award, and large pickups haven't yet been tested, IIHS said. 

IIHS awarded the first Top Safety Pick to 2006 models and then raised the bar the next year by requiring "good" rear test results and electronic stability control as either standard or optional equipment. With last year's addition of new criteria for roof crush, the institute's crash test ratings now cover all four of the most common kinds of crashes. 

More than 12,000 people died in frontal crashes of passenger vehicles in 2009 in the United States, more than 6,000 died in side impacts, and more than 8,000 died in rollovers, many of which also involved a front or side impact. Rear-end crashes usually aren't fatal but result in a large proportion of injuries. Neck sprain or strain is the most commonly reported injury in two-thirds of insurance claims for injuries in all kinds of crashes.

Vehicles rated "good" for rollover crash protection have roofs more than twice as strong as the current federal standard requires. IIHS estimates that such roofs reduce the risk of serious and fatal injury in single-vehicle rollovers by about 50 percent compared with roofs meeting the minimum requirement.

When the first roof crush results were released in March 2009, only a third of the SUVs tested had "good" roofs, IIHS said. Since then about 113 vehicles have been tested, and the majority are rated "good" for roof strength. 

Hyundai is a case in point. The Tucson and the small SUV's twin, the Kia Sportage, earned a "poor" rating for roof strength in 2009, with the weakest roof among all of the small SUVs evaluated that year, IIHS said. A redesign helped the 2011 models secure a "good" rating and Top Safety Pick. Hyundai also improved the roof on another SUV, the midsize Santa Fe, and redesigned the Sonata, a midsize car that had drawn a "marginal" roof rating the first time around. 

The outlook for side-impact protection has brightened, too, Lund noted. Many cars failed the side test IIHS began conducting in 2003, but now most vehicles ace the test thanks to stronger side structures and standard side airbags that protect the head and torso. It's an important improvement because new IIHS research shows that the risk of dying in a crash is sharply lower for people in vehicles that earn "good" ratings in the IIHS side test, the institute said.

Chrysler added torso airbags to the redesigned Jeep Grand Cherokee to bolster side crash protection and earn a "good" side rating. The previous design relied on head curtain airbags to cushion occupants in side crashes and only rated "marginal" for side protection, IIHS said.

Safety equipment is increasingly standard. Ninety-two percent of 2011 model cars, 94 percent of SUVs, and 56 percent of pickups have standard head and torso side airbags. Electronic stability control is standard on 92 percent of cars, 100 percent of SUVs, and 72 percent of pickups.

"Automakers deserve credit for quickly rising to meet the more-challenging criteria for Top Safety Pick," Lund said. "Several already have requested tests for new models due to ship early next year, so we expect to add even more winners to the 2011 list." 

IIHS groups Top Safety Pick winners according to vehicle type and size. Lund advised consumers to keep in mind that size and weight influence crashworthiness. Larger, heavier vehicles generally afford better occupant protection in serious crashes than smaller, lighter ones. Even with a Top Safety Pick, a small car isn't as crashworthy as a bigger one. 

The institute's frontal crashworthiness evaluations are based on results of 40 mph frontal offset crash tests. Each vehicle's overall evaluation is based on measurements of intrusion into the occupant compartment, injury measures recorded on a 50th percentile male Hybrid III dummy in the driver seat, and analysis of slow-motion film to assess how well the restraint system controlled dummy movement during the test. 

Side evaluations are based on performance in a crash test in which the side of a vehicle is struck by a barrier moving at 31 mph. The barrier represents the front end of a pickup or SUV. Ratings reflect injury measures recorded on two instrumented SID-IIs dummies representing a 5th percentile woman, assessment of head protection countermeasures, and the vehicle's structural performance during the impact.

In the roof strength test, a metal plate is pushed against one side of a roof at a displacement rate of 0.2 inch per second. To earn a "good" rating for rollover protection, the roof must withstand a force of four times the vehicle's weight before reaching five inches of crush. This is called a strength-to-weight ratio.

Rear crash protection is rated according to a two-step procedure. Starting points for the ratings are measurements of head restraint geometry -- the height of a restraint and its horizontal distance behind the back of the head of an average-size man.

Seat/head restraints with "good" or "acceptable" geometry are tested dynamically using a dummy that measures forces on the neck. This test simulates a collision in which a stationary vehicle is struck in the rear at 20 mph. Seats without "good" or "acceptable" geometry are rated "poor" overall because they can't be positioned to protect many people, IIHS said.