[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YBiRKCpkMY[/ame] The MINI Countryman just knocked it out of the part with a Top Safety Pick from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Here’s a direct quote from the IIHS’ site: The Mini Cooper Countryman, a 4-door small car, earns the Institute’s top safety accolade after achieving good ratings for front, side, rollover, and rear impact protection. It is the first Mini to win, and the second model from BMW to achieve top results since the Institute tightened the criteria to include good performance for roof strength in rollover crashes [the other is the 2011 BMW 5 series]. The roof of the Countryman withstood a force equal to nearly 5 times the car’s weight. By comparison, the current federal standard is 1.5 times weight. In addition to good crash test ratings, winners must have electronic stability control (ESC), an important crash-avoidance feature, which is standard on the Countryman. You can see the scores here.