Five safety stars for Picanto, Elantra

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) has awarded a maximum five-star crash safety rating to both the Kia Picanto and Hyundai Elantra.

Launched in February this year, the small Hyundai sedan tallied 35.01 points out of a possible 37, attracting a five-star rating for all variants.

“The Elantra performed well in crash testing and is another sound addition to Hyundai’s fleet which sits well with its competitors in the small passenger vehicle market,” said ANCAP Chief Executive Officer, James Goodwin.

However, the Elantra achieved only an ‘acceptable’ pedestrian protection rating after testing revealed the base of the windscreen as "an area for safety design improvement", and ANCAP criticised its lack of automatic emergency braking as standard across the range.

"Advanced safety assist technologies are unfortunately lacking on the Elantra, and Hyundai — along with other manufacturers — should step up and include technologies such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB) on all models,” said Goodwin said.

At the same time, ANCAP has also awarded Kia's new micro-car, the Picanto, with the same five-star safety rating after it tallied 34.12 points out of 37.

ANCAP praised the sub-$15,000 city-car's five-star ranking, but said its pedestrian protection rating was only 'marginal'.

“The Kia reinforces that safety should not be restricted by budget with the Picanto providing an affordable five-star vehicle choice,” said Goodwin.

The Picanto has been available in New Zealand for a number of years and an upgraded version went on sale in Australia last month, when it arrived with a five-star ANCAP rating based on data supplied by Euro NCAP following a crash test of a vehicle some years earlier.

Although it comes with a four-star safety rating in Europe, the Picanto meets a standard to achieve five stars by ANCAP’s current testing criteria after Kia updated the paperwork for this to happen without further local testing.