Five stars for Honda Jazz a joint effort – ANCAP
BY TIM ROBSON | 28th Jan 2015
Established a little under two years ago, the ASEAN NCAP team held the 64km/h frontal offset crash test for the Jazz in its Malaysian crash labs before sending the data to ANCAP to incorporate into its result.
All variants of the Jazz built from July 2014 are equipped with electronic stability control (ESC), electronic brakeforce distribution (EBD), emergency brake assist (EBA), reversing collision avoidance (camera) and emergency stop signal (ESS) as standard. Dual frontal, side chest and side head airbags (curtains) are standard.
It scored 15.58 out of 16 in the frontal offset test, and a perfect 16 in the side impact test done in ANCAP’s Sydney labs.
ANCAP communications manager Rhianne Robson told GoAuto that it was the first opportunity to use the ASEAN lab in a test.
“We take their test data – we don’t take their result, because they score it slightly differently,” she said. “The data can then be fed into an overall ANCAP rating, combined with the other tests that we do. We all follow the same frontal offset protocol.” The Malaysian lab currently only has the capacity to do frontal offset tests, but it is working through a program to implement other tests in conjunction with ANCAP and other NCAP organisations.
“ANCAP has had a big role in the formation and development of ASEAN program on a couple of levels,” said Mrs Robson. “We’ve provided a few of our engineers over the years to help them establish a test program, test lists and protocols, and assist with the building of their test lab.
“We also have an involvement on a policy level, as well as aiding them with communication advice on how to best cover their markets they’ve got a few countries they have to target. They’re learning from us on a whole lot of levels, and it’s a ongoing relationship.” ANCAP has worked with other crash bodies around the world for more than 15 years, with an aim of eliminating the practice of regionalising cars on safety grounds.
“We’re all fighting for the common good to increase vehicle safety standards across the world, not just in our particular regions, but we bat for each other,” said Mrs Robson.
“The overall goal for all NCAPs is to see the same vehicle produced using the same materials to the same level of safety the world over. That does put pressure on those manufacturers who do build or spec cars to a lower standard for certain regions to meet prices points.” Mrs Robson denied that ANCAP was diluting its message by aligning with Euro NCAP standards that might be lower than those enforced by the Australian body.
“It’s part of an ongoing effort though Global NCAP to bring all the tests and protocols into closer alignment,” she said. “ANCAP’s alignment with Euro NCAP is bringing two of us closer together. That then brings pressure to bear on manufacturers to produce the same car for all markets.
“With the Jazz, it’s an ANCAP safety rating that we have issued. The frontal offset data is done to a protocol that we follow and, at the end of the day, the car itself is proving its worth.
“We do testing all over the world at different labs as long as the tests are conducted to those protocols, and we have oversight of that, then it meets our requirements.” The end of manufacturing in Australia will also mean that ANCAP will be more important than ever, according to Mrs Robson.
“Half of our ratings are done on cars that are not tested by Euro NCAP – it’s been the same for fifteen years,” she said. “We still need to cover that chunk of the market that isn’t covered by other NCAPs, so there’s definitely a need for ANCAP to test vehicles from other markets like China, India and other countries.
“We don’t want a specific vehicle just for one region – we want a world car.” The next annual meeting of the global NCAP groups is in June, in Gothenburg, Sweden.
