The ruse of Australia’s ANCAP barrier testing has again been highlighted by the all-new Kia Sedona scoring the maximum five-star rating by the North American National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Kia Sedona is the same vehicle as the Kia Carnival which was rated as only four-star by ANCAP despite the local private testing organization claiming it was aligning with similar international barrier testing like NHTSA.
So you can imagine how confused Kia engineers in Korea must be right now – the same car tested in North American scores five stars but only four stars in Australia?
And it was similar story for the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer and Mini Cooper which somehow ANCAP managed to rate as only four stars.
A fortunate by-product of the Federal Government’s current review of the Motor Vehicle Standards Act (MVSA) would be the dismantling of the unnecessary duplication of barrier testing carried-out by ANCAP (which was only ever justified by testing locally-produced vehicles which, as we know, will cease next year when Holden, Ford and Toyota switch to full importation).
“Currently the MVSA imposes $281 million a year in regulatory compliance costs (such as ANCAP) and we are confident these costs can be reduced substantially,” Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development the Hon. Jamie Briggs said in a press release yesterday.
