NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Last month, General Motors Saturn unit was forced to recall 246,000 of its VUE sport-utility vehicles, after the vehicle's rear suspension broke during rollover testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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| Saturn VUE |
Now, after GM made improvements to resolve that problem, both the two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive versions of the VUE tipped up on two wheels during new NHTSA tests .
The new rollover resistance test results and ratings have been posted on NHTSA's Web site, the agency announced today.
NHTSA's rollover test, called a dynamic stability test, consists of a series of turns taken at increasing speeds from 35 to as high as 50 miles per hour. During the test vehicles are equipped with outrigger devices which prevent them from completely rolling over.
In a statement regarding the rollover rating results, General Motors called the maneuver used in NHTSA's test "an extremely severe and unnatural maneuver."
Both versions of the VUE were ultimately given a three-star rating by NHTSA. The 4-wheel drive VUE is calculated to have a to a 20.3 percent chance of rolling over in a single-vehicle crash and the 2-wheel drive version is calculated to have a 22.3 percent chance of a rollover.
| More on rollover ratings
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The rating is based on a calculation from the width of the vehicle's wheel-base and the height of the center of its mass. Although the rating could be improved by passing the dynamic stability test -- which would mean driving through the course at 50 miles per hour without tipping -- the rating for a vehicle that tips is based solely on the calculation from its dimensions.
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