Interesting article in GoAuto News this morning detailing the failure of Holden's VE Commodore.

GM Holden has defended the safety of its new VE Commodore following the four-star crash test rating it received last week from the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP), whose test results show the billion dollar VE recorded a lower frontal offset score than that of the VY Commodore in May 2003. Information obtained by GoAuto reveals that while its predecessor scored 12.79 points out of 16 in the offset impact test, the all-new Commodore scored just 11.45 points in the same test – meaning it has fallen below the 12.5-point minimum score required by ANCAP to be eligible for five stars overall.

Holden Chairman Denny Mooney made an interesting statement.

"ANCAP is only one measure of safety performance. It is just one element of assessing a car’s actual safety. People will always do their own testing, but we do a lot more extensive testing in a lot more situations, so we feel we have an overall car that is suited to the real world."

That's nice Mr Mooney. Now why don't you release the results to the public?

Chairman of the Australasian New Car Assessment Program, Mr Lachlan McIntosh, seems to share this frustration.

"Holden tell us they do all those tests, but they never publish them – the results are never public ... I’ve been doing this job of chairman of ANCAP for almost 15 years and Holden has made those claims for 15 years that they do all these tests, but we never see the results because they’re never published."

If you look beyond all the hype, Holden really dropped the ball with the new Commodore. It's higher kerb weight was said to improve the vehicles chassis strength and overall crash worthiness. As the recent ANCAP results show, this doesn't seem to have worked.

It is sad to think that the Commodore could so easily have achieved the first five star ANCAP result for an Australian manufacturer, had it included features such as seat belt reminders and features such as side curtain airbags as standard. What is perhaps most disappointing however, is that the VE model just barely scrapped past the VY model, which was based on the 1997 VT model.

For all their bluster, the development of the Holden Commodore has basically stood still for the past ten years. I guess this may go part way toward explaining why GM Holden posted a loss for the second consecutive calendar year.

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