[mtnrajdeep]

All vehicles equipped with air-bags come with seatbelt pretensioners. This is a requirement so that you are not injured by the airbags deploying in case of a crash.

[myavu]

Originally Posted by smartcat

Thanks all, for the inputs. The SAFETY quick reference guide looks like this now

Also Beat LT has Front Seat Belts with Load Limiters (What is that?)

[holysmoke]

The i20 1.2 petrol comes with seatbelt pretensioners

[PhrozenFire]

Fantastic effort Smartcat! And its good to see you being open to and responding to suggestions
On the safety aspect, i believe some points should also be awarded to whether or not a car has a roll-cage (or do all modern cars these days have some sort of roll-over protection system?)

[<Badguy>]

Great Work Smartcat

A very nice and detailed analysis of the small cars on the different parameters.
Guess what it has been recent five six years in which safety of cars have come in the priority list of the owners. Five years ago it was almost unimaginable to hear of airbags and ABS in small size cars. May be we will get more features in coming years down the line.

But the average Indian Buyer is still looking for cars with most practicality and safety features priority come only in the end.

[gou]

Amazing work smartcat!! Hats of to you!!

What surprises me the most is in braking distance i20 1.2 petrol is 2nd from top and i20 1.4 diesel is 2nd from bottom . I doubt that weight difference between the two can cause such a difference. What can be the other reasons behind this?

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by myavu

Also Beat LT has Front Seat Belts with Load Limiters (What is that?)

This article lists out the advantages of Load limiters and pre-tensioners.
Pretensioners/Load Limiters

Originally Posted by mtnrajdeep

All vehicles equipped with air-bags come with seatbelt pretensioners. This is a requirement so that you are not injured by the airbags deploying in case of a crash.

How sure are you about this? Because, Swift's 1.2 petrol features list specifically mentions that they have seatbelts with pre-tensioners while Ritz 1.2 Petrol features list does not mention it.

Also, if you look at the above NHTSA link, it mentions that only 63% of the cars sold in USA are equipped with pretensioners (note however that it is a 2002 article).

Originally Posted by holysmoke

The i20 1.2 petrol comes with seatbelt pretensioners

Will add a point to i20 petrol & diesel.

Originally Posted by PhrozenFire

On the safety aspect, i believe some points should also be awarded to whether or not a car has a roll-cage (or do all modern cars these days have some sort of roll-over protection system?)

Roll cage? I think only Rally cars have them! Not sure about anti-roll bars though - I feel all cars have them. Difficult to get this data especially since the car websites or brochures don't mention this - but all of them do have side impact beams and crumple zones.

Originally Posted by <Badguy>

Guess what it has been recent five six years in which safety of cars have come in the priority list of the owners. Five years ago it was almost unimaginable to hear of airbags and ABS in small size cars.

Wasn't Swift the first small car to have aribags & ABS? I think it hit the markets around 5 years back.

[mtnrajdeep]

Originally Posted by smartcat

How sure are you about this? Because, Swift's 1.2 petrol features list specifically mentions that they have seatbelts with pre-tensioners while Ritz 1.2 Petrol features list does not mention it.

Wasn't Swift the first small car to have aribags & ABS? I think it hit the markets around 5 years back.

I am very sure about it. All cars with airbags have seatbelt pre-tensioner's. The pre-tensioner's job is to pull you back into your seat in the event of a crash by reducing the slack in the seatbelt. This means you are pulled back into your seat just as the air-bags explode and prevents your face from being in the inflating air-bag's path, which could prove fatal.

If I remember correctly Wagon R 1.1 was the first small car that had the option of ABS+Airbags. Sad thing is no one opted for it since it was optional, you needed to wait for it after ordering as it was built to order and pushed up the prices by about 40k.

[fiat_tarun]

Nice thread smartcat. You sure have put in a lot of effort into collecting & arranging the data. Me thinks the i20 will come out on top since we've got only equipment/features and space remaining and both are the i20's forte.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by gou

What surprises me the most is in braking distance i20 1.2 petrol is 2nd from top and i20 1.4 diesel is 2nd from bottom. I doubt that weight difference between the two can cause such a difference. What can be the other reasons behind this?

i20 has rear disc brakes too - probably the only small car to be equipped with that. That's why i20 petrol almost comes out on top. There could be two "scientific" causes for such a poor performance by i20 diesel -

- Improperly calibrated ABS. It is cutting in and out excessively, increasing the braking distance.
- Printing mistake by Overdrive magazine

Originally Posted by mtnrajdeep

If I remember correctly Wagon R 1.1 was the first small car that had the option of ABS+Airbags. Sad thing is no one opted for it since it was optional, you needed to wait for it after ordering as it was built to order and pushed up the prices by about 40k.

You are right - whenever airbags & ABS are offered as "options" (rather than in a model lineup), it never finds itself in the car because of 30 to 60 day waiting period.

Originally Posted by fiat_tarun

Me thinks the i20 will come out on top since we've got only equipment/features and space remaining and both are the i20's forte.

Although the idea of this thread is to find out which car is technically the best (on paper), it can also be used to compare cars in a particular price range and find out which is the best among them.

Eg: Chevrolet Beat 1.2 Petrol Vs Hyundai i10 1.2 Petrol Vs Ford Figo 1.2 Petrol.

[pnredkar]

An amazing thread. Very logical analysis. Great work smartcat.

Originally Posted by gou

Amazing work smartcat!! Hats of to you!!

What surprises me the most is in braking distance i20 1.2 petrol is 2nd from top and i20 1.4 diesel is 2nd from bottom . I doubt that weight difference between the two can cause such a difference. What can be the other reasons behind this?

Originally Posted by smartcat

i20 has rear disc brakes too - probably the only small car to be equipped with that. That's why i20 petrol almost comes out on top. There could be two "scientific" causes for such a poor performance by i20 diesel -

- Improperly calibrated ABS. It is cutting in and out excessively, increasing the braking distance.
- Printing mistake by Overdrive magazine

I think there is more to this. If you see here, the petrol cars are at the top of the heap (only two diesels in the top ten) while diesels are generally at the bottom.

Does the high torque of diesel engines have something to do with this?

[challa]

Excellent thread and smart analysis by Smart Cat, love to see the final list.

[sanagg1]

Originally Posted by ampere

Cat,

Where is interior space and boot space being considered?

Originally Posted by sanagg1

I hope you'll take into account the inside space also while making the final analysis.
Nice work keep it up
cheers

Any Hope on this account ?
cheers

[ACM]

Smartcat - great compiling and analysis.

A pointer the Isofix is quite useless in India, I have the Skoda Laura with Isofix car seat holder latches. But an Isofix compatible car seat available from skoda (and I did not find it anywhere else (including at mothercare) cost about Rs. 33,000 vs normal car seats in the range of 5-10K. so I think most (read 99.999%) will go in only for normal car seats so Isofix though a nice concept will not work in India at least for the next 5 years untill all cars standardise it and suitable car seats are available at a reasonable price in India.

Awaiting the finals (with equipment levels). The Braking distance that you mentioned should have been added in though you don't have the details for some. you could simply give avearage points to cars for which you do not have details.

[ACM]

Smartcat great going so far, The Isofix car seat holders are of not much use in India. I do own the Skoda Laura with Isofix holders, but the only such compatible car seats that i could find were from Skoda itself and cost Rs. 33,000 each. Normal car seats cost about Rs. 5,000-10,000 an Isofix holders are more a convenience feature rather than a safety feature (as normal baby car seats can be fitted into all cars with rear seatbelts).

Awaiting the results of feature analysis and inside space considerations.

Also felt that braking distance is an important parameters and though the details are not available for some cars they are available as per your list for most. you could either get the rest from any other car magazine or - just give the cars with no distance figure available the average points and give the rest points based on their performance. - Just an Idea incase you find the time to go throught this.

Once again great going, the results seem very promissing.