According to the Thursday-released results of a test which the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety started using last year, only 2 out of 13 small Sport-Utility Vehicles (SUVs) performed satisfactorily in the insurance industry group's simulation of a fatal kind of front-end crash.

Revealing that nearly all small SUVs tested by it group fared poorly in its front-end crash tests, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said that the performance of most of the popular models was quite disappointing.

Going by the group's evaluations based on the tests, the topmost "good" rating was bagged by only one of the 13 small SUVs tested - the 2014 Forester from Subaru. The second vehicle which performed well was the 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport which got an "acceptable" rating.

All the remaining 11 small SUVs were rated either "poor" or "marginal" by the insurance industry group. The SUVs which were rated "poor" included Hyundai's Tucson; Kia Motors' Sportage; General Motors' Buick Encore; Chrysler's Jeep Patriot; and Ford's Escape.

The vehicles which got "marginal" ratings from the group included the Honda CR-V; the Jeep Wrangler two-door; the BMW X1; the Nissan Rogue; the Mazda CX-5; and the Volkswagen Tiguan.

Meanwhile, about another big seller, the Toyota RAV-4, the insurance industry group said that the vehicle did not do the testing because Toyota requested for a delay, so that it could improve the structure of the SUV.