2023 Audi A5 Coupe Earns IIHS Top Safety Pick Plus Award

The 2023 Audi A5 coupe has earned a Top Safety Pick Plus award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety due to its newly tweaked headlights, which were added for the new model year.

Related: Here’s Every Car That Earned an IIHS Top Safety Award for 2022

Illuminating a New Level of Safety

In order for a vehicle to earn a Top Safety Pick Plus award, a vehicle must have a good or acceptable rating for its headlights across all trim levels (a Top Safety Pick only requires one set of headlights to have a good or acceptable rating). Additionally, vehicles must also earn good ratings across six crash test categories in order to receive a Top Safety Pick Plus: driver-side small overlap front, passenger-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests. The vehicle must also secure an advanced or superior rating for its front crash prevention system in the vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian tests.

In the case of the A5, it was able to meet this standard both by excelling at crash-testing and by debuting the new headlight setup for 2023. The outgoing 2022 model had earned a Top Safety Pick award with its existing headlights, but it missed out on the higher Plus award due to LED reflectors in the lights getting a marginal rating on the Premium trim. Audi addressed this by eliminating that headlight system for 2023.

Note that though the award applies to the model-year 2023 A5, the award itself is for 2022. Confusingly, IIHS’ calendar-year awards don’t always correspond with model years.

Building on Success

This latest accomplishment for the Audi A5 coupe has also allowed the German luxe brand to have the most cars rated at Top Safety Pick Plus for 2022, with 15 vehicles attaining the accolade, including the A3, Q5 and E-Tron.

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