Cars: Best of the best, 2007

These are the models that rose to the top in nine different areas. One is tops in three of them.

Ford Taurus
Safest car
Ford Taurus
While it may be impossible to choose a single, safest car it seemed reasonable to start with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Pick list. These are, arguably, the safest cars on the road. Take a broader view and one of them, the Ford Taurus, may be even safer than the rest.

Starting with the IIHS list, we then looked at the results of seperate crash tests performed by the government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Not surprisingly, many of the vehicles got top scores there, too. But not all of them. Some were less than perfect or simply hadn't been tested by NHTSA.

Then we looked at stability ratings, which only NHTSA provides. These ratings show how stable a vehicle is in an emergency maneuver. All things being equal, a more stable vehicle - one with a lower center of gravity - should be better able to avoid a crash.

Finally, bigger is better. Front impact crash test scores show only how well a vehicle will do in a head-on with a vehicle of its own size, not a bigger one. It's not just about mass, either. Size means more crush space between between you and the other car.

All of that led us to the Ford Taurus full-sized sedan, which has aced every crash test given.

It's conceivable that the new Volvo S80 and the Audi A6 could be even safer, but those cars have not yet been crash-tested by the government so we can't know for sure.

Until then, the Taurus remains safely at the top of the list. Besides, in the Taurus you don't have to pay luxury car money to get armored car protection.

Last updated January 08 2008: 1:40 PM ET

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.