Buying a car with good crash safety ratings to determine its crashworthiness has become more relevant today than ever before in India
Buying a new car around the festive season is a common phenomenon in India. Aspirations to own a new vehicle are high around this time and car manufacturers come up with attractive offers and discounts to push sales and boost foot fall into their showrooms. At the same time, buying a safe vehicle is turning out to be paramount as well.
With time, the awareness for vehicular safety has increased among Indian car buyers. Working in that regard are NCAP outfits like Global NCAP and the newly conceived Bharat NCAP. Raising awareness further, here is a list of top-rated cars in terms of crash safety you can buy around the festive season.
Safest Cars To Buy Around – GNCAP (New Norms)
In this list, we have compiled the 10 highly rated vehicles from Global NCAP’s latest crash safety norms along with all the vehicles Bharat NCAP has managed to test till now. Not a lot of vehicles have been tested by Global NCAP adhering to their latest crash safety norms. So, there are not a lot of vehicles with good safety ratings.
However, there are quite a few vehicles tested before Global NCAP updated their crash testing norms and can be seen in the table at the end of this article. Sticking with GNCAP’s new norms, Tata Motors has emerged as the leading car manufacturer where vehicular safety is concerned. The company’s Safari, Harrier and Safari all score full fat 5 Stars.
Also, these are the only ones to have crossed the 30 points threshold in Adult Occupant Safety Rating. Next in line are Skoda and Volkswagen with their MQB A0 IN platform based portfolio consisting of Kushaq and Taigun SUVs along with Virtus and Slavia sedans. These vehicles too, score full fat 5 Star crash ratings.
Hyundai Verna’s 5 Star crash rating was quite a surprise, considering the company was not exactly known for good crash safety ratings. With Verna, Hyundai broke the jinx and has secured a position high up in the table. Another brand which associates itself with safety, is Mahindra Scorpio N demonstrates it under GNCAP’s updates crash safety norms with 5 Star adult occupant rating and a 3 Star child safety rating.
Notably, Kia Carens scores full 5 Stars in child occupant safety, but fails to bag more than 3 stars in adult occupant safety ratings. Vehicles like Tata Punch, Tata Altroz, Mahindra XUV300 (now XUV3XO), XUV700 have demonstrated excellent 5 Star crash rating under GNCAP’s older norms. Notably, Mahindra Thar (3-Door), Tata Tiago and Tigor, Renault Kiger, Triber and Nissan Magnite have scored a respectable 4 Star ratings each, under GNCAP’s older norms.
Bharat NCAP
Up until now, the newly conceived Bharat NCAP has been able to analyze crash performance of seven vehicles. These include Safari / Harrier, Punch EV, Nexon EV, Nexon ICE, Curvv EV and Curvv ICE from Tata Motors and then the recently crash tested Citroen Basalt. Tata’s offerings crash tested under Bharat NCAP norms passed with flying colours scoring full fat 5 Star crash ratings in both adult and child occupant safety. Nexon ICE, Curvv ICE and Curvv EV crash test results were announced yesterday.
The most surprising result came from Citroen Basalt, which scored a respectable 4 Stars. Positioned on the same CMP skateboard as other cost-effective C-Cubed vehicles, Basalt was speculated to score very similar to eC3’s 0 Star rating awarded by Global NCAP. Defying all expectations, Basalt has bagged 4 Stars in both adult and child occupant safety. Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara and Nissan Magnite facelift seems to have undergone crash tests by Bharat NCAP and the results are due.
