The Genesis, a high-end passenger car by South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co., has been named the safest car of the year in a vehicle safety test that evaluated 12 other cars including the Audi A6 and the Ford Explorer, the transportation ministry said Wednesday.
  
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Genesis scored 96.6 points out of a possible 100 in four crash tests that covered frontal and side-impact tests.
   
The Sorento sport utility vehicle (SUV) from Kia Motors Corp., an affiliate of Hyundai Motor, came in second with 92.1 points, followed by the Kia Carnival minivan with 91 points.
   
The safety tests were conducted on seven locally produced vehicles, including the Hyundai Sonata, the Spark EV and the Cruze of GM Korea, a local unit of U.S. automaker General Motors, and Kia's Soul and Sorento.
   
The ministry also tested six imported vehicles, such as the Volkswagen Golf, the E300 of Mercedes-Benz, the Lexus ES350 and the QM3, an SUV imported and distributed by Renault Samsung, the local unit of the French automaker Renault.
   
Among the six imported cars, the Volkswagen Golf received the highest score of 90.3 points, closely followed by the Mercedes-Benz E300 with 90.2 points.
  
Any vehicle with a total score of 83.1 points or higher in the four crash tests is given the highest Level 1 safety grade.
   
Along with the Golf and the E300, the Audi A6 and the Lexus E350 were given the Level 1 grade as they scored 87.6 and 86.7 points, respectively. The Ford Explorer was given the Level 3 grade as its total score came to 79.8 points with 9.2 points out of 25 in a pedestrian safety test.
   
The QM3 was given the lowest Level 5 grade with its total score coming to 77.2 points. The vehicle scored 51.3 points out of 67 in the frontal-impact test, the lowest among all 13 cars tested.
   
The Genesis received the highest score of 65.5 points in the frontal-impact test with the Hyundai Sonata and the Cruze from GM Korea receiving the same near perfect score.
   
The Hyundai Genesis also received the highest score of 21.4 points in the pedestrian safety test with the Volkswagen Golf and Kia Sorento both receiving the second-highest score of 18.8 points.
   
In a driving safety test, largely measured by the minimum braking distance, the Audi A6 and the Mercedes-Benz E300 stood out with 9.6 and 9.5 points out of 10, respectively. The Genesis was given 9.4 points. (Yonhap)