ANCAP to crash test more sports cars

ANCAP’s lambasting of the Ford Mustang has had little impact on the iconic coupe’s sales success, but the independent safety authority is convinced the publicity surrounding the poor results has prompted ‘oh shit, we could be next’ realisations for other sports car makers.

And it has signalled it will potentially test more low sales volume vehicles including sports cars going forward as it seeks to widen its coverage of Australia’s huge fleet of new vehicle offerings.

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program handed down a two-star rating for the Mustang in early 2017. The 2018 update launched this week has been bumped to three ANCAP stars now that it has standard autonomous emergency braking and lane-keep assist, and its airbag deployment issues have been rectified.

However, there have been no changes to the body structure -- something ANCAP criticised in its original test, especially in relation to rear-seat protection. That ensures the Mustang still scores way below the maximum five-star rating that new vehicles are expected to deliver nowadays.

At this week’s launch of the MY18 Mustang, Ford Australia president Graeme Whickman resoundingly defended the Mustang’s safety.

Through all the controversy and negative coverage, the Mustang has retained its position as the top-selling sports car in Australia.

But ANCAP boss James Goodwin insisted the Mustang testing program was valuable, even if buyers weren’t being deterred by it.

“What the Mustang did was it went as a flag to the other brands that had similar models and they thought ‘oh shit we could be next’.

“I’ve had one brand tell me that they literally had a memo that asked ‘if ANCAP or Euro NCAP knocks on the door for our two-door sports car what will the result be?’

“That is a good sign that they are thinking along those lines and yes we could be picking up the phone and letting them know ‘we have secured four of those vehicles and you will be next on the program’.”

The challenge for ANCAP is its mandate is to test big-selling vehicles rather than niche vehicles like sports cars. The Mustang was tested by Euro NCAP with ANCAP’s strong encouragement because it had become such a big seller in Australia.

“It [Mustang] highlights that as much as possible we should be testing as many vehicles as we can,” said Goodwin. “We have pretty strong market coverage now.

“We are sitting at 95 per cent, which is almost as high as we have ever had. So, there’s that five per cent we need to really drill down on.”

Goodwin conceded that the Mustang’s sales success did pose questions about how much attention was being paid to ANCAP results by consumers, but deflected his answer.

“You could say that we are not doing our job because it [Mustang] is still selling well,” he said.

“But I say to people this is more a consumer thing. For that sort of money for a new vehicle why would you accept something that is really not up to the standard you would expect?

“Even if you don’t feel dudded in a safety sense, I think the consumers really should have felt dudded that a company felt consumers in the USA more important than the customer in Australia.”

That’s a reference to the fact AEB and other updates flowed into the Mustang in the USA – and Europe – some time ago.

“A three-star vehicle is really not acceptable in this day and age, but that is for the consumer to come to in their own minds,” said Goodwin.

“The rear-end occupant protection is very low and if people are buying them [Mustang] I would caution putting their young kids in the back of that vehicle because of the results we have got.”