The ANCAP champions and flops of 2024

While the validity and relevance of ANCAP’s testing protocols have come under fire in recently, there’s no denying a five-star safety rating from Australia’s leading independent vehicle safety body is a big deal.

An even bigger deal is a sub-five-star rating, especially if it’s three or less.

With that in mind, here are the three highest and lowest ranked vehicles tested by ANCAP in 2024.

A result that will have come as music to the ears of Toyota, fleet managers and rideshare drivers everywhere, the safest vehicle released in 2024 was the new Toyota Camry, which netted a weighted score of 88.4 per cent.

The latest Camry shone in the destructive crash tests with an adult occupant protection score of 95 per cent – the highest of any vehicle tested last year – and a handy child occupant protection score of 87.

It scored 84 per cent for its vulnerable road user protection and 81 per cent for its safety assists.

Second place went to the new Mazda CX-80 seven-seat SUV which nabbed an overall score of 87.6 per cent thanks to a pleasingly consistent showing across all four fields of testing.

The big family hauler yielded category scores of 92, 87, 84 and 83 per cent respectively, the former being second only to the Camry.

An important note here is that the rating applies to all petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid variants of the CX-80 as opposed to one or the other.

Breathing down the CX-80s neck was the Zeekr X compact electric SUV which yielded an overall mark of 87.4 per cent from its respective 91, 87, 84 and 84 per cent category scores.

The X drew particular praise from ANCAP executives as it’s the first model from the Chinese brand to arrive in Australia, and yet it netted the third-highest mark of all vehicles tested in 2024.

“We saw a handful of new manufacturers enter the mix locally in 2024, and each of these – including Zeekr – have shown their commitment to bringing five-star cars to Australian and New Zealand consumers,” CEO Carla Hoorweg said.

Far from a positive start to the new-generation Suzuki Swift’s tenure Down Under was a shock one-star safety rating, equating to a weighted mark of 56.6 per cent.

The new-generation light hatch yielded an adult occupant protection score of just 47 per cent and scored 59 per cent for its child occupant protection, 76 per cent for vulnerable road user protection and 54 per cent for its safety assists.

This rating is at odds with the three-star Euro NCAP rating awarded in Europe, however “ANCAP was informed of physical differences” between the Aussie and European Swifts which called for further testing and eventually gave us today’s rating.

Netting a controversial three-star safety rating last year and an overall mark of 68.2 per cent was the facelifted Hyundai i30 Sedan, which garnered category scores of 71, 81, 62 and 56 per cent respectively.

The controversy here is that the model’s mid-life update really only extended to new front and rear aprons – hardly a comprehensive overhaul – and the introduction of a hybrid powertrain, and it was the latter ANCAP used to justify the exercise.

Ultimately, only the hybrid should have been dealt the three-star rating while the petrols, which are essentially the same cars they were back in 2021, should remain ‘unrated’.

Jeep’s first-ever EV, the Avenger, only performed marginally better than the Hyundai with a weighted overall score of 68.4 per cent, equating to a three-star rating.

The pint-sized SUV scored 79 per cent for adult occupant protection, 71 for child occupant protection, 59 per cent for vulnerable road user protection and 54 per cent for its safety assists.

Hoorweg labelled the results “disheartening” seeing as the Avenger is an all-new model and an outlier to the trend of modern EVs scoring five stars.

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