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-   -   Fiat Punto, the first car ever to receive Zero Stars in the Euro NCAP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/193342-fiat-punto-first-car-ever-receive-zero-stars-euro-ncap.html)

2017 Fiat Punto EURO NCAP Tested,

Fiat Punto scores first-ever zero-star NCAP safety rating

The Punto – first introduced in 2005 – was re-examined as part of Euro NCAP’s regular reassessment of vehicles.







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N1Q0k6-ebg

What on earth? Perhaps EuroNCAP has very limited number of stars to give away (like bitcoin) and is stingy with ratings these days?

The car is 12 years old and has none of the advanced systems today's cars have. Time for fiat to stop production, it's way past its sell by date.

Euro ncap constantly upgrades it's tests, that's why Tesla was blowing its trumpet earlier, then claimed that improved tests were a conspiracy against electric cars. The new tests are big on offset protection, most older models won't make the cut.

The Fiat Punto is now the first Car ever, to be awarded Zero Stars by EuroNCAP in it's almost 20 year testing history.



Detailed Results can be found here:
https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/fiat/punto/29849

Here is the summary of findings (along with reasons behind this poor rating) from EuroNCAP:

Key Takeaways:
- A car that was considered safe a decade back, is no longer considered safe, in today's modern era. Regulations are made stringent year on year.
- The Punto was awarded 5 Stars 12 years back, but lack of updates to keep it up-to-date has resulted in this dismal score.
- A Heavily built Car does not always guarantee good results in the Crash test. It takes clever engineering (not over engineering) to make a safe car.

"The passenger compartment of the Punto remained stable in the frontal offset test."

That itself is a relief in the Indian context. Now imagine the condition if our cars like the Kwid, Swift, Aspire, Scorpio etc gets tested in EuroNCAP. :Frustrati.

Global NCAP is much less stringent in comparison and most cars sold in our market unfortunately cant even pass those standards. And our government wants to dilute that as well. :eek:

Coming to Europe - FIAT is just dragging the platform to death. A platform launched back in 2005 has no space on the roads post one full decade and more.

FCA seems to have some issues with NCAP tests.
Even its later relaese ARGO was refused to be given Voluntarily for LATIN NCAP tests unlike VW whose Polo was released much later and NCAP tested.

Link

Wow! I never thought there would be a car with zero rating !
I’d bet if our safety/ compliance agencies were really effective & stringent, half the Marutis/ Hyundais wouldn’t be plying on our roads..
I know these Companies play to the crowd and to keep cost at minimum (what with most of our population desiring an ICE compared to maybe an airbag!), but still you’d think these Companies would have moral responbilities (albeit it is improving as each year passes).

Kind of sad that the cars which we Indians consider ‘safe’ thanks to the ‘thud’ and ‘heavy built’ (what a joke) are considered as trash cans abroad. The need of the hour is to apply stringent safety regulations instead of showing off to the world, in an unplanned way that every car should be electric in a decade.

No wonder car companies treat India as a 3rd world country.

I never thought I would see the car I previously owned get a zero star rating, especially when I knew how safe it was compared to most other options in the market at the time. I'm just :Shockked:

That being said, when the Punto was released, it had a five star safety rating from Euro NCAP, and that just goes to show how strongly Europe pushes for safer cars every year. A big :thumbs up

If it was possible to give a minus rating, I'm sure that all the above mentioned cars would be given one!

Couldn't agree more!

+100

Here's the video -

https://youtu.be/9N1Q0k6-ebg

I am not sure if the car companies should take all the blame. Most of us would know, the price of cars in India is much higher. In this perspective we pay more than a typical European and we should consider ourselves richer.

But the problem is multifold. A typical sedan in India is taxed at 1.43(GST)x1.15(road tax)=1.65 i.e 65% tax.

Our purchasing power is low and therefore cars cannot sell in good numbers beyond a limit. Our tax system eats 65% of that limit. This leaves a manufacturer with little room to play. It is further worsened by higher fuel prices (again tax >100%) and a typical Indian looks for better fuel economy and that means a lighter car.

The budget cars have wafer thin margins and so is their sheet metal thickness.

I guess, just making rules more stringent would probably be not enough. We need to provide the manufacturers enough room to do it. May be giving tax benefits for cars that score 5 stars in NCAP would help

I wasn't particularly shocked reading this news online today. I expected it to get at least a couple of stars, but zero was definitely was not expected. An eye opener for all Fiat fans, myself included.

An eye opener to read the reports before reacting just based on the star ratings. Lost count of the number of times (for various cars) that I've mentioned this on Team bhp. :)







The reason for awarding capped at zero stars was because of a missing seatbelt reminder warning which gave it zero for an entire category of safety assist systems as per the new Euro NCAP rules. The chasis was actually stable under tests.

Its not the case with other zero star cases we've seen earlier (made famous by Global NCAP, not Euro NCAP) where the dummy readings were bad (and the person would surely die) and hence given zero. And the structure was also found unstable for some of those cars.

That said - Will Punto score anything more than zero in Global NCAP? Here's the moment of truth - No it wont. Because airbags are not standard on the base variant and its the base variant that gets tested by NCAP. The version with airbags should score better unless the chasis integrity has been compromised for India.

Thank you for this post. I wanted to post on similar lines but you beat me to it. Could not have explained better myself.

Reading the reports tells you that the body she'll is quite stable and zero stars are actually due to many modern aids missing. Which is not what we can say about our bestseller.

Remember how the roof of swift crumbled?

Of course all this is under the assumption that Fiat has maintained same standards in India.

On another note, does this put a shadow on retaining your 5 year old car? The market moves quickly. Is it worthwhile to upgrade to a 'new' car just for the newer and better safety features if not anything else?

Correct. But some points are very serious. Let me quote them.

Not good!

Again critical human body parts have poor protection!

Not good to hear again. This could have been better, a very serious concern indeed.

This Euro NCAP crash test is an eye opener. What's the point of having a stable chassis, good build and still critical parts of human body at high risk? Not to forget the Punto which was crash tested here even had front airbags. I am not judging only by the number of stars. The detailed report has mentioned poor protection for adult (51%) and child (43%) occupants too. The norms are very strict now and you get more stars for features like radar based brake assist. What happens to the passengers inside the compartment matters more than what happens to the body shell or how stable it is!!. End of the day, no car is safe. Be it any car.. At high speed impacts : only luck is the safety factor.