Model secures one star
Locally sold versions of the Suzuki Swift have been given a one-star safety rating by ANCAP.
The fourth-generation model entered the Australian and New Zealand markets earlier this year.
At the time, Suzuki Australia advised that the safety specification of vehicles sold locally differed to those sold in Europe with extra testing subsequently undertaken by ANCAP to assess Australasian models.
ANCAP’s testing of locally sold Swift revealed areas of concern with its physical crash-protection performance resulting in a one-star rating.
A score of 47 per cent was achieved for adult-occupant protection and 59 per cent for child-occupant protection. Collision-avoidance performance was also limited with a score of 54 per cent recorded in the safety-assist assessment pillar.
“This one-star result serves as an important reminder for prospective buyers to check the safety rating of vehicles they’re looking to buy,” says Carla Hoorweg, pictured, ANCAP’s chief executive officer.
“Earlier this year, ANCAP was informed of physical differences between locally supplied Swift models and those supplied in Europe, so we conducted additional crash tests on local vehicles and found some areas of concern.
“In comparison to the three-star rating achieved by Swifts sold in Europe, vehicles sold in Australia and New Zealand performed differently when crash-tested.”
Performance variation was seen in the frontal offset and full-width crash tests, with higher chest loads and leg-injury risk – excessive pedal movement – to the driver in the frontal offset test and a significantly greater rear-passenger chest compression measurement recorded in the full-width test, which exceeded allowable limits.
Protection of the chest – a critical body region – was, therefore, assessed as poor and the score capped, resulting in zero points awarded for this test.
Hoorweg says: “The design of some of the structural elements and restraints in locally sold Swift vehicles appear to lack robustness leading to variation in crash performance.”
Poor scores – indicated by red colour-coding in ANCAP’s technical report – were also recorded for the head and chest of child dummies in head-on and side-impact crash test scenarios. The child-occupant protection result of 59 per cent is one of the lowest scores seen to date.
The Swift is the latest model to enter the Australasian market with different safety credentials to its European counterpart. It follows safety-related differences recently uncovered by ANCAP assessing the Honda Civic, CR-V and ZR-V.
While ANCAP and Euro NCAP test and rating criteria were aligned in 2018 to promote consistency across markets, scrutiny of locally available models remains essential to identify specification differences.
