Four-star Commodore safe, says Holden

GM HOLDEN chairman and managing director Mark Reuss has dismissed claims that the VE Commodore might be “less safe” than the Ford FG Falcon, following the latter’s much-publicised five-star Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) crash test rating – a first for a locally-produced vehicle.

Speaking to the media in Melbourne last week, Mr Reuss said that Holden designed, developed and engineered the VE Commodore to meet real-world crash results.

He added that the big Holden is capable of flying through any number of international crash tests without a problem.

“If we didn’t have a safe car I would feel differently. We have a great, safe car. We put six airbags and ESC as standard in our car, so I’m not worried about it,” Mr Reuss stated.

“People who buy our cars or who want to buy our cars know we have a great safe car,” he reiterated.

But while Mr Reuss congratulated Ford for its Falcon result, he did add that Holden does not engineer any of its vehicles simply to achieve a high score in the ANCAP ratings.

“My first reaction is that I am happy when our industry provides safer vehicles. I am happy for Ford for getting that star rating on that car. It’s great for them, for the industry and for the customers,” he offered.

“You know, we continually develop and refine the design on our car on a continuing basis.

Left: VE Ute crash testing.



“I’m not sure that we design exclusively for the star system. We design for the safety of our customers. We’ve done 5000 simulations and 80 different crash tests, and we are continually doing that.”

In June last year, ANCAP released figures showing that the VE Commodore achieved a ‘good’ four-star result – which is the same as the old BFII Falcon and on par with the Toyota Aurion and Mitsubishi 380.

As we reported in GoAuto last week, at the time, the VE was not eligible to take part in the pole test, which is a pre-requisite to scoring five stars, because it was not fitted as standard with curtain airbags.

However, even though Holden standardised curtain airbags in the base Omega earlier this year, the VE Commodore would not score the five-star rating based on its last ANCAP outing because it did not achieve the minimum 12.5-point score in the offset frontal test – rating an 11.5-point score.

On the question of having the VE retested, Mr Reuss says it is not necessary.

“To be honest with you, we haven’t really talked about it. We’re not here to make star ratings we’re here to do the right thing with the car and if we test again, I’m confident we’ll have a safe car.”

Furthermore, Mr Reuss is not worried about the potential marketing advantage the Falcon now has over its foe of 30 years.

“We don’t have a big strategy around reacting to Ford,” he said, adding: “I hope Ford – in fact everybody – continues to develop safer cars.”

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