Tata Xenon ute crashes to two safety stars

Tata’s Indian-made Xenon ute has been awarded a lowly two-star crash safety rating by the Australasian New Cars Assessment Program (ANCAP),

In stark contrast, Toyota’s new Kluger, Mitsubishi’s new Outlander PHEV, Peugeot’s 2008 and the Citroen C4 Picasso all scored the maximum five stars in the latest round of ANCAP crash testing.

ANCAP said the Xenon, released in single-cab and dual-cab forms priced from $22,990 last October, received the “poor” two-star rating due to its lack of electronic stability control.

However, its local distributor Fusion Automotive said at the time that the Xenon would be fitted with the potentially life-saving active safety technology from January production, before they arrived here “a few months” after that.

ANCAP said the Xenon “performed fairly well” in the frontal offset crash test, but the omission of ESC and side or curtain airbags (only twin front airbags are fitted) limited its score to just two stars.

The result matches the two-star ANCAP safety rating notoriously achieved by the Chinese-made Great Wall V-Series utes and Chery J11 small SUV in 2011, and falls short of the sub-standard three-star rating awarded to the Chinese-built Foton Tunland ute last February.

ESC became a prerequisite for a four-star ANCAP safety rating for all utes in 2012 and, along with side airbags, is fitted to all Ford Ranger, Mazda BT-50, Volkswagen Amarok, Holden Colorado, Isuzu D-Max, Nissan D40 Navara and selected Toyota HiLux and Mitsubishi Triton utes.

In part, that’s why most Rangers, BT-50s, Amaroks and Colorados all come with a five-star AMCAP rating, while the HiLux, Navara and Triton score four.

ANCAP Chairman Lauchlan McIntosh said ESC will become mandatory to achieve even a two-star rating.

“While ESC is not a regulatory requirement for light commercial vehicles as yet, ANCAP introduced ESC as one of its mandatory requirements [for five stars] more than six years ago,” he said.

“As we raise the safety bar higher and higher each year, ESC is now a mandatory ANCAP requirement for five-, four-, three- and two-star ratings.”

While the latest Outlander SUV’s five-star result was extended to the plug-in hybrid version launched this week, the C4 Grand Picasso (released last month) offers a wide range of driver safety aids including emergency stop signal, blind spot monitoring, daytime running lights and a reversing camera.

The French people-mover and this month’s new Kluger SUV both come with head-protecting side airbags that extend to the second and third row of seats, while Peugeot 2008 SUV introduced last October offers a reversing camera and hill launch assist.

“Unfortunately none of the vehicles is equipped with autonomous emergency braking (AEB),” said ANCAP.