With over a decade of service under its belt, the current generation Volvo XC90 is really on its last legs. A replacement for the old girl has been designed and developed and will soon be introduced to take over from it. Still, the XC90 is such a ingenious piece of engineering that after all these years it is still winning awards and praises from the industry’s most prestigious institutes.

That latest organization to acknowledge Volvo XC90’s brilliance is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), who awarded the car with its highest safety certificate, the Top Safety Pick+.

Volvo XC90 may have an old design, but it’s been constantly updated with new technologies, so it is safer than most its modern rivals. IIHS was impressed by the car’s good structural performance in the small overlap front test, and the low risk of any significant injuries in a crash of high severity thanks to side torso and side curtain airbags.

An all-new XC90 will debut at the end of 2014 and go on sale in early 2015. It will feature Volvo’s next-generation safety and driver-support technologies, including Pedestrian Detection in Darkness and Road Edge and Barrier Detection with Steer Assist. Volvo never drops the ball on safety.