IIHS put a 2026 BMW i4 xDrive40 Gran Coupe through the updated side crash test and the B-pillar stopped 23 centimeters, roughly nine inches, short of the driver’s seat centerline. That is a lot of daylight in a test designed to shove a modern SUV’s bumper line through a car’s doors. The i4 took a Good overall rating, with Good marks for the safety cage and for the driver’s head and neck, torso, pelvis, and head protection. The full results are on the IIHS rating page for the 2026 i4, and the rating applies to 2026 models.

What The Updated Side Test Involves

IIHS rewrote this test in 2021 and it is a meaner exam than the one it replaced. A 4,200-pound moving deformable barrier, built to sit at the bumper and grille height of a current SUV, hits the driver’s side at 37 mph. SID-IIs dummies sized like a small woman or a 12-year-old ride in the driver’s seat and in the second row behind it. Engineers measure how far the structure crushed inward, read injury sensors in the head, neck, torso, and pelvis, and use high-speed film and greasepaint to check whether either dummy’s head found anything hard.

The One Blemish Is In The Back Seat

Rear passenger head protection came back Acceptable, the only non-Good score in the whole evaluation. The rear dummy logged a HIC-15 of 312 with no hard contact recorded, against 103 for the driver. Everything else about the rear occupant was clean: 20 mm of maximum torso deflection versus 30 mm for the driver, and 1.5 kN of combined pelvic force versus 3.2 kN up front. The driver’s side absorbed the hit, which is what you would hope for in a test where the barrier arrives at the driver’s door.

The i4 also posted a Good in the updated moderate overlap front test, tested as a 2025 eDrive40, with an Acceptable for rear passenger restraints and dummy kinematics. The small overlap front rating is incomplete because IIHS has only run the driver side, which scored Good.

The Headlights Are Still The Problem

Two headlight setups are rated on the i4, both LED projectors, neither curve-adaptive. The eDrive35, eDrive40, and xDrive40 with the Shadowline package, plus the M50, get a Marginal rating. The same three trims without Shadowline get a Poor. The difference is glare: the Marginal lights created some, the Poor lights created excessive amounts, including a reading 173.8 percent over the threshold on a right curve. Both setups gave inadequate high-beam visibility down the straightaway on either side of the road.

So the way to get better-rated headlights on an i4 is to order the appearance package that blacks out the exterior trim. That is a strange thing to have to tell a shopper.

No Award, And Not Because Of The Crash Tests

The 2026 Top Safety Pick criteria ask for Good ratings in the small overlap front, moderate overlap front, and side tests, acceptable or good headlights standard across all trims, and at least an Acceptable in the pedestrian front crash prevention test. The i4 clears that last one outright with a Good, avoiding the child and adult pedestrian targets in most runs on both low and high beams. It cannot clear the headlight requirement with a Marginal and a Poor on the books.

Its vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention 2.0 rating is Poor, which only matters for the “plus” award. Against a passenger car target the i4 avoided the collision at 31, 37, and 43 mph, centered and off-center. Against the motorcycle target it shaved 4 mph at 31 mph centered, and autobrake was not tested in the remaining motorcycle runs.

The X1, X3, and X5 all hold 2026 Top Safety Pick+ awards, and only two midsize luxury cars won anything at all this year. The i4’s problem is a light source and a glare calibration on a car that has been on sale since the 2022 model year, and it is the kind of fix that happens with a revised headlight assembly rather than a new car. Whether BMW bothers this late in the G26’s life is another question.

First published by https://www.bmwblog.com