It's not a question of manufacturer or country of origin, but of size and to an extent design. A friend was driving her Lexus LS400 south from San Jose on the mountain freeway years back in terrible weather and very heavy traffic all travelling at around 65mph, when some idiot in front of her lost concentration and touched the central crash barrier (the road is very narrow as it snakes through the mountains). He ricocheted off and hit another car in the nearside lane, very hard. Both vehicles began to spin and of course immediately lost speed. She braked, but was rammed from behind by a large truck whose driver was in never-never land. She was pushed forward into the spinning vehicles and herself started spinning, hitting everything imaginable in the process. By the time it all stopped her Lexus was unrecognisable as a car, the truck which had hit her was on its side and burning, and the occupants of the cars around her were mostly very seriously injured (I don't think anyone died, but I'm not sure). She had a few cuts and bruises and whiplash. Given the damage to her car she was extremely lucky to escape serious injury or even death - in fact, were it not for the automatically tensioned seat belt and the numerous airbags in her car the outcome would probably have been very different. I don't know what the cars around her involved in the "accident" were, although I know one was a Mercedes. She was extremely grateful to Toyota for the design of her car.
