Look Ma, one more star!
After taking the world aback with a paltry 2-star safety rating, Ford’s very latest 2018 Mustang has fared a tad better in the latest round of EuroNCAP safety testing, netting a three-star rating for its efforts. To recap, the pre-facelift Mustang managed just 2-stars after performing poorly in the frontal offset and full-width collision tests, with the airbags failing to fully inflate and the seatbelt pre-tensioners and load-limiters failing to work properly.
The lack of active safety equipment also affected the ratings, with nothing along the lines of autonomous emergency braking or even lane-keep assistance on hand. Thankfully, those two systems join things like pedestrian detection, forward collision warning, and updated airbag inflators as part of the standard kit list for the newly-refreshed model.
On the subject, the director of research at Thatcham Research (a member of EuroNCAP) Matthew Avery, had this to say:
“Our advice to buyers is to always opt for a EuroNCAP five-star car, so a three-star rating is never a cause for celebration. However, Ford’s rapid addition of a suite of standard safety tech and its prompt updates to improve the performance of the airbags and restraints is to be applauded, and underlines the power of the EuroNCAP consumer-testing programme as a force for positive action.”
While this is definitely an improvement over the 2-star rating (which the Australasian New Car Assessment Program honours, too), it’s still some way off the going standard. With smaller, more affordable cars able to manage 5-star ANCAP and EuroNCAP ratings without skipping a beat, we’re still wondering how it’s possible for a modern Ford to fare so badly. It’s not like it’s a low-volume car either, and with the pony car racking up great sales figures in many markets, we’d suggest that they take safety a little more seriously, even in fun lifestyle cars like the Mustang.
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