Indian Autos blog

The new Nissan Micra supermini due to go on sale in the Europe in November, 2010 is unlikely to score the ‘esteemed’ 5-star Euro NCAP rating. The 2011 Nissan Micra would most probably settle with a 4-star rating.

The reason for the Nissan Micra’s inability to get the 5th star is because of the revised crash safety scoring system by Euro NCAP for 2010. As per the new norms only a vehicle with stability control as standard on most of its versions would get a Euro NCAP 5.

The latest Nissan Micra has been designed mostly for the developing markets unlike its predecessor, so the focus of the new Micra is more on simplicity, functionality and low production and running costs.

Vincent Cobee, Project Director for the new Nissan Micra -

We want to be competitive on safety, but to achieve the new five-star rating becomes outrageous. We are making no definitive statement on the rating we expect, but let us say that three stars would not put us in the right competitive set.

Does the fifth star really matter for the Indians? No, not at all. Even if Nissan goes all the way to get the stability control on the Micras and get a Euro NCAP 5-star, the Indian version would still come with the basic safety features- just two front airbags and ABS (that too only in the end version), while side curtain airbags, stability control would be ignored for the Indian market.

So a Euro NCAP 5-star on the European versions of a car doesn’t really help improve the safety standards of the same car sold in India.

Lets take the ‘uber-cool’ Hyundai i20 for example. Hyundai is aggressively marketing as a Euro NCAP 5-star rated car and many i20s have a ‘Euro NCAP 5-star’ sticker on the rear windscreen. But the specs of the car sold here in India would qualify only for a 4-star rating because there is no stability control and side curtain airbags are available only in the top-end variant. So the Indian i20 isn’t a ‘Euro NCAP 5-star rated’ car.

It is time for the Indian consumers to wake up and question companies’ shrewd marketing strategies. Or at least people should not believe the lies they are selling in the name of marketing.

The latest EuroNCAP safety results are out and 5 out of 6 new cars crash-tested scored 5-Stars of which, we’re interested in only three cars; Honda Jazz, Hyundai i20, Suzuki Alto/A-Star (the cars sold/yet to be sold here in India).

Euro NCAP’s new rating scheme focuses on the vehicle’s overall safety performance which gives consumers an easy to understand single score. The new system considers passenger protection during impact to the front, side and rear of the car, and pole (if the car impacts with a tree or other fixed narrow object). Child protection, pedestrian protection and the availability of driver safety aids are also considered.

This post is a compilation of crash-test statistics, pictures, videos and some amazing revelations based on the indexes provided by EuroNCAP, car by car.

A few years ago, I think the Daewoo Matiz (Chevrolet Spark to recent followers) also scored 3 stars in the Euro NCAP crash tests.

The Alto hatchback (locally called A-Star), built at Suzuki‘s Indian facility in Manesar and rebadged as the Pixo for Europe, received 46%, 25% and 39% for adult passenger protection, child protection and safety assistance performance respectively.

To give you an example of the result, the Hyundai i20, which is a class higher than the Alto received maximum five stars and its peer i10 scored four stars in its recent test.

The Euro NCAP tests assist manufacturers in knowing where it loses out to the competition. As a remedy to the low score, Suzuki immediately offers ESP as an option on one of the base models.

Many Indians believe in fate, so this option would be a joke to customers in here.

Source- Euro NCAP

The Toyota IQ, Japan’s answer to the Mini, Fiat 500 and the Smart has scored an amazing overall score of 79 percent at the recently conducted Euro NCAP crash test.