Ford's Safest Cars: Photo Gallery

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- With the enthusiasm over Ford's(F) new Focuses and Fiestas, the automaker's impending safety system upgrades and the general burst of affection the public now has for the automaker, this would seem a fine time to assess the 2010 model-year Ford cars currently on the market.

To do so, we reached out to Consumer Reports for some exclusive insight into Ford, and the group came back to us with overall safety, accident avoidance and crash protection scores for a variety of Ford vehicles.

Consumer Reports got its overall safety scores by combining government and insurance-industry crash-test scores with the accident-avoidance tests -- including braking and emergency handling testing -- that Consumer Reports conducts at its 327-acre test facility.

"Looking at the crash-test results, it's clear that Ford is going in the right direction," Consumer Reports' auto content specialist Michael Quincy told TheStreet. "We think the most important crash tests come from the IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety), and the only models that don't have the top-score of "good" are Ford's older models: Focus, Explorer, Mountaineer." In addition, Quincy noted that redesigned versions of these cars are all set to debut (except for the Mountaineer, which is going away along with the entire Mercury line).

Please read on to find out more about Ford's five safest cars ...