ANCAP, in addition to recently testing the Kia Optima, had also ran the popular Suzuki Vitara through its series of tests where it came out winning with a full 5-star rating.
While the Vitara loses out somewhat because of its lack of Autonomous Emergency Braking, in all variants sold Down Under despite being equipped with the feature in units sold in Europe, the Suzuki performed well in other respects.
However, it also does come without other active safety tech that are becoming more and more commonplace such as blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist.
Out of a possible 16 points each, the Vitara took 14.79 in the Frontal Offside Test and a full 16 for the Side Impact Test, which are the main contributors to its overall 5-star category score of 35.79 out of a possible 37 points.
James Goodwin, ANCAP’s CEO said of the Suzuki Vitara’s score: “Until now, the Vitara was ranked as the top-selling unrated model across all passenger, SUV and light commercial vehicles in both Australia and New Zealand. The Vitara performed well in physical crash testing and includes reversing collision avoidance and a manual speed limiter as standard.”
With this batch of crash tests behind them, ANCAP now has a market coverage that spans 93 percent of all cars available for sale in Australia and New Zealand today.
On this, Mr Goodwin commented: “Our focus of late has been to target models which have sat unrated for some time and we will continue this focus over coming months in parallel with our usual program of rating new models entering the market.”
For more on Suzuki vehicles, including pricing and specifications, check out our Showroom.
