[RavenAvi]

Global NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) has completed safety assessments of 38 cars available in the Indian market between 2014-2020. The results have been shared in a consolidated form now by the crash test worthiness major.

A pleasant surprise - out of the Top 10 car brands with the highest safety ratings, 8 are Indian. 5 car brands belong to Tata Motors, 2 are from Mahindra, while Maruti-Suzuki sneaks into the Top 10 with the Vitara Brezza.

The other two entries are the Volkswagen Polo and the Toyota Etios.

The top 3 cars with full 5 star safety ratings are the Mahindra XUV300, the Tata Altroz, and the Tata Nexon (all units produced from December 7, 2018 onwards). All the Tata Nexons produced before the date specified have scored 4 stars in safety.

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[warrioraks]

Originally Posted by RavenAvi

A pleasant surprise - out of the Top 10 car brands with the highest safety ratings, 8 are Indian. 5 car brands belong to Tata Motors, 2 are from Mahindra, while Maruti-Suzuki sneaks into the Top 10 with the Vitara Brezza.

Kudos to Indian manufacturers. One definite reason to be vocal for local while buying cars!

[Shreyans_Jain]

Tata Motors pioneered safe mass market cars for India with the surprise 4 star rating for the Nexon, which they subsequently improved to 5 stars. Having an in-house crash testing facility is finally paying dividends in a marketable way. What’s even more commendable is the humble Tiago getting 4 stars. Mind you, this is Global NCAP, not the watered down desi BSNVCAP. This has made Maruti Suzuki management look like jokers, for they insist that Indian budget cars are too cheap to be made safe.

[vishnu.t91]

Barring Tata Nano, all other cars from Tata have scored 4 stars or higher safety rating, which indeed is commendable. Way to go, Tata.

Indian brands, Tata and Mahindra, have been performing very well in terms of safety nowadays.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Highest ratings for manufacturers -

Datsun - 1 star.

Hyundai - 2 stars.

Honda - 3 stars.
Ford - 3 stars.
Renault - 3 stars.

Maruti Suzuki - 4 stars.
Volkswagen - 4 stars.
Toyota - 4 stars.

TATA Motors - 5 stars.
Mahindra - 5 stars.

Brands like Hyundai and Honda command a premium in the entry level market - and we blindly believe their products, but both these companies are yet to score anything above 2 and 3 stars respectively and doesn't look like they care! Whether they are truly up to international build standards for its more expensive products still remains to be seen. Ford and Renault haven't done well either and Maruti Suzuki is on the good boy list only due to the Brezza (and probably the SCross too).

Safety conscious customers are better off with Volkswagen / Toyota - or even better - our own TATA and Mahindra.

[ABHI_1512]

The list is from 2014-2020 and hence i find it surprising that Ford has only one car in the whole list and which scored 3 stars. As far as I remember, Ford started the trend of providing the safety equipments like the dual airbags and ABS as standard right from the base variant with the second generation Figo and Aspire. The Figo in the list above was tested before the safety equipments became standard and hence the result.

The rest of the Ford cars were never tested and I am sure that if now Ecosport or Figo is tested, they would definitely score high on the safety ratings. Ford was almost ridiculed for highlighting safety as standard for their models in India but now thankfully Indian customers are embracing safety as a virtue and which is resulting in manufacturers putting in efforts on that front.

Of course, Maruti is yet to get the essence of it by constantly defying the NCAP ratings. Their refusal to take the ratings seriously is a slap on the face of Indian customers and that is actually sad. Glad that Tata and Mahindra feature in the top and its time customers put more emphasis on safety than the useless gizmos like automatic wipers and headlamps and what not !

[Shreyans_Jain]

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

Brands like Hyundai and Honda command a premium in the entry level market - and we blindly believe their products, but both these companies are yet to score anything above 2 and 3 stars respectively and doesn't look like they care! Whether they are truly up to international build standards for its more expensive products still remains to be seen.

While I agree with your premise, it will be a bit unfair to single out Hyundai or Honda with just this set of data at hand. Granted, Hyundai has been especially guilty of de-specking the Indian versions of their cars, to the extent of using completely different and inferior platforms compared to the international versions. But the fact remains that almost their entire current range hasn’t been crash tested by GNCAP. Ditto for Honda. The Mobilio is long dead, and no Honda currently on sale has been crash tested.

On a related note, GNCAP seems to have lost initiative/funding to continue their good work with the Indian car market. What started as a movement to actively crash test Indian cars for promoting safety has now died down to become a purely voluntary exercise. The list of cars tested is completely obsolete now with so many models discontinued or changed. It doesn’t reflect market realities either (very few top 10 or top 15 cars covered) Nowadays, only those who know they’ll score well are bothered to test, as they can use the results for marketing. Others are simply not bothered.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by Shreyans_Jain

While I agree with your premise, it will be a bit unfair to single out Hyundai or Honda with just this set of data at hand.

But the fact remains that almost their entire current range hasn’t been crash tested by GNCAP. Ditto for Honda.

Not unfair IMHO because it was an open process. GNCAP picked random cars - yes, but companies were able to volunteer for tests as well.

And volunteering one of their cars wouldn't have been a big deal for any of these manufacturers - it would only be a fraction of the budget they spend on PR and advertisements.

They knew they never had good ratings, they knew others were scoring 4 and 5 stars - but as long as the cars sell in truckloads - it didn't really matter to them. Instead, they wait for GNCAP to pick the cars and we just have to hope that whatever they picked is an exception, not the norm. After all - if everything they sell is 4-star / 5-star stuff, why would they not spend such a budget and get some good press? Shows their commitment (or lack of it) to the safer cars in the Indian market - doesn't it?

Now - it's different with VW and Toyota. Both these companies proactively responded to GNCAP tests by getting safety features standard across variants and getting their updated versions tested IIRC. TATA and Mahindra went one step further and made 5-star safety a goal. Pretty sure atleast some of those tests were volunteered and not randomly picked up by GNCAP, like when TATA had the Nexon tested for a second time.

It will be unfair to these companies to dismiss others like Hyundai, Honda, Ford or Renault as due to lack of tests. 'Tested safe' > 'Trust my brand, its safe' anyday.

[Sebzgeo89]

Going through the list, few are missing! Honda Amaze scored a 4 star rating and Suzuki Ignis scored a 3. Am I missing something?

[xjosephjacob]

Kudo's to the Indian manufacturers for making it to the top Just wish the others catch up very soon.

Just to play a devils advocate here, with my little experience in working with global research and advisory companies in the software industry, who puts the software in to various magic 'buckets' supposedly based on the merit of the product. As an enthusiast community, should we just depend on GNCAP alone, or figure out a way to aggregate the scores from various NCAP's to form a unbiased opinion on the safety aspects (taken that the product configurations may be different in different markets) ?

[Storm2.0]

Tata and Mahindra can show the so called loved manufacturers of India that you don't have to charge a bomb for providing safe vehicles to your customers.

Hyundai, Honda,Maruti and Ford wake up.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by Sebzgeo89

Going through the list, few are missing! Honda Amaze scored a 4 star rating and Suzuki Ignis scored a 3. Am I missing something?

Those ratings were not for the Indian market. Amaze was tested for Latin America and Ignis for Europe.

These are 'Made for India' cars tested by GNCAP as part of the 'Safer cars for India' campaign.

Originally Posted by xjosephjacob

As an enthusiast community, should we just depend on GNCAP alone, or figure out a way to aggregate the scores from various NCAP's

http://www.globalncap.org/ncaps/

All these NCAPs are the same - others are regional bodies. Safer cars for India and Africa campaigns were initiated by GNCAP because crash tests were not mandated by rules in both markets till recently with the diluted BNVSAP in India.

No use comparing other ratings because companies have double standards for markets like India.

[7000plusrpm]

Why is VW Polo listed twice in this list, once with 4 stars and the other with none?

[JithinR]

Originally Posted by 7000plusrpm

Why is VW Polo listed twice in this list, once with 4 stars and the other with none?

When the Polo was first tested it got an automatic zero stars since it didn't have the standard dual front airbags then.

Volkswagen then proactively sent back the Polo for a second test equipped with dual front airbags and got the four star result. Post that (as far as I can remember), Volkswagen made dual airbags as standard across the range and increased prices by Rs 25,000 (I think).

At that time Indian general public didn't care about safety as they do today so their decision was mostly appreciated only by enthusiasts.

[Lalvaz]

Originally Posted by RavenAvi

Global NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) has completed safety assessments of 38 cars available in the Indian market between 2014-2020. The results have been shared in a consolidated form now by the crash test worthiness major.

A pleasant surprise - out of the Top 10 car brands with the highest safety ratings, 8 are Indian. 5 car brands belong to Tata Motors, 2 are from Mahindra, while Maruti-Suzuki sneaks into the Top 10 with the Vitara Brezza.

The other two entries are the Volkswagen Polo and the Toyota Etios.

The top 3 cars with full 5 star safety ratings are the Mahindra XUV300, the Tata Altroz, and the Tata Nexon (all units produced from December 7, 2018 onwards). All the Tata Nexons produced before the date specified have scored 4 stars in safety.

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While there's no denying the role of GNCAP in creating awareness about the crash worthiness of cars sold in India, this report seems to take too much credit for GNCAP improving the safety levels in India.

For instance, this report shows cars having 0 airbags and 0 crash worthiness ratings suddenly morph into a 2 airbag and 4 worthiness rating. See VW Polo and Tata Zest for instance. Now, the airbag rule was on the cards for a long time and was made mandatory by the govt so the automotive manufacturers had to comply. GNCAP had little or no role to play in that.

I also see that there are 3 models rated 5 star and all 3 of them are new, so in reality GNCAP has not really succeeded in shaming auto manufacturers to actually improve on the crash worthiness of their existing models, even if they already have better rated variants of the same model for the export markets. The step motherly treatment to the Indian consumer is therefore glaringly evident.

But anyways, a huge debt to GNCAP for helping create more awareness about the unsafe models sold in India.