Four-star crash safety for upgraded Barina

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) has concluded from a test of Holden's Barina light car that the recently upgraded model in three-door form is worth four stars for its passive safety.

Along with the Barina's recent facelift (more here), the Korean-sourced vehicle was upgraded with a stronger B-pillar -- courtesy of high-strength steel -- a redesigned front end to provide three load paths for impact forces and standard side-impact airbags to protect both the head and thorax of front-seat occupants.

The three-door model was the one Barina variant tested, but the revised safety measures apply to the five-door models also. This result for the Holden places it broadly on the same level as the class-leading Toyota Yaris and allows the Barina to challenge both the Toyota and second-placed Hyundai Getz in the area of passive safety.

Previously sold in Australia as the Daewoo Kalos, the current TK model Barina was found wanting, scoring just two-star crash safety in its superseded form. That hasn't ultimately affected sales, according to Holden's Product Communications Manager, Kate Lonsdale, who doesn't believe the Barina's previous two-star rating drastically affected sales.

"It got a lot of press obviously, but our sales of Barina before the upgrade have been very strong," she told the Carsales Network.

"We've by far outsold what we sold of the XC Barina, which was a four-star-rated car from Europe..."

In fact, Holden says that the Kalos-based TK Barina -- admittedly with the advantage of a sedan bodystyle in the range -- has sold as many as 34,000 units over the period since its launch in 2005. Over a three-year period between 2002 and 2004, the Opel Corsa-based XC Barina sold roughly 21,000 units, according to VFACTS.

So if buyers haven't been deterred by the relatively poor safety standing of the Barina, why bother upgrading it?

"Our philosophy has always been one of wanting to improve the safety of all our vehicles across the range," says Lonsdale.

"That's not purely to meet an ANCAP result, it's to make our cars safer for our customers. It's part of our strategy anyway -- to ensure we continually improve all our vehicles."

Holden is ambivalent about ANCAP. The company is not averse to using the results promulgated by the crash-testing body to promote its products, but Holden itself doesn't believe the ANCAP results should be taken as a measure of a car's real-world safety -- and that's a long-standing view which hasn't changed merely because the Barina is now up there with the safest of light cars.

"We've always been consistent with our views on NCAP testing," Lonsdale explains.

"We acknowledge the procedures, but we still believe you can't determine a vehicle's overall safety from two crash scenarios. We believe it's just far too simplistic. We perform a much wider array of tests on our vehicles.

"ANCAP is a nice third-party endorsement for sure, but we did 80 crash tests on the Commodore, when we first launched it."

There's some validity in what Lonsdale says. Taken at face value, the Barina is now as safe as the Commodore large car, if you go on the ANCAP results alone.

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