[SUPERSPORT]

A win for us customers who have been raising our voice for safety.
But I would not congratulate Hyundai for this. Why?

Because they are not someone new in the industry who didn't know how to make safer cars. They knew how to make safe cars, but chose not to for greedy profits while treating our lives as trash. And even now, the body shell as well as the footwell area is rated unstable. Just makes me feel that all they wanted with this exercise was poster points for advertisements. I still remember the first gen i20 magna with 5* NCAP stickers ten years back.

AFAIK the detrimental effects of a crash with a speed higher than what is tested may be more pronounced in cars with an unstable body shell. I hope experts here can enlighten us more on this aspect.

So what do we congratulate them for? For respecting the value of our lives when they should've done it in the first place a decade back? No.

Yes this is a win for us though. But a car costing 20 lakhs INR still getting away with unstable body shell whereas Hyundai would never dare to do the same in other countries. This second grade treatment for us needs to stop.

All I'm asking for is safety from Hyundai that is comparable to the safer competition (even those that are a lot cheaper). They can definitely do that. Cost is not a limitation either when cars costing half the price are able to do better.

The corporate giant has finally woken up so let us hope for more good news on the way. Even with an unstable body shell, this is still a significant improvement.

& congrats to GNCAP for paving the way for these improvements as well as BharatNCAP. They are the real heroes, woke up the Government, manufacturers as well as we consumers about what we deserve.

[Ashar]

This is a great news for car buyers in India. Until now, Hyundai's focus was a troublefree and smooth motoring, but now they have added safety also to their hygiene factor. Hope Hyundai does the same and aim to get at least a 4-star crash rating for all of its cars. Soon, Maruti is going to follow suit and with that, in a not so distant future, safety can be taken for granted in all new cars sold in India.

This also means that manufacturers like Tata are going to lose their one and only USP. This should encourage them to build more reliable, smoother cars with improved after sales experience.

[SJ1211]

Significant achievement. Kudos to Hyundai! I strongly feel this will percolate into a 5 star and feature loaded Creta which will.be the blockbuster mass market car ever produced in India! Hyundai knows it's customers are waiting for one and I hope it will deliver to them.

This will also put all other mid size sedans to rest as Verna becomes a complete package now!

[ron178]

Not too surprised - catching up with market trends is Hyundai's forte. It's great to see the sedan segment attracting so much positive attention. The Verna, Slavia, City and Virtus are all really solid packages. Each has its USPs, yet I can't find a single reason not to recommend any one of them. I wish Honda too had bothered getting a GNCAP rating for the City.

Also, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "unstable bodyshell" is a very misleading term that has less use in the real world and more in fearmongering in the YouTube comments section. The Verna's passenger compartment and footwell resisted intrusion well during the test. If it had collapsed, intrusion measurements for the steering wheel, A-pillar and pedals would be higher and GNCAP would have penalised the Verna much more accordingly.

Unstable passenger compartment doesn't mean structural collapse, but questionable robustness of the amount of intrusion recorded (i.e., will the intrusion be as low if you repeat the test, or if the test was run slightly differently?). Yes, that is undesirable, but there are a ton of other such penalties GNCAP applies (even in other 5 star cars) for questionable robustness of performance of other aspects, but they don't get as much attention because they don't have the same ring as the word "unstable" which is good for fearmongering.

Also it's often a touch-and-go situation, especially in cars with a dual-loadpath design like the Verna, where even one path showing signs of reaching its limit will attract a penalty (in the conventional three-loadpath design GNCAP allows for a buffer of one loadpath). That can be caused by something as trivial as a couple of spot welds releasing during the test. Whether it is a smart idea to give it so much attention and blow up the word "unstable" to pretend it makes a life-or-death difference in the real world, is not my cup of tea.

What is more interesting is the reported failure of the 3 year old's child restraint. GNCAP says Britax tell them it was a "one-off" and that they verified it by running a faster side impact on another Verna where the restraint worked fine (they did not lie, the second side impact car can be seen in Siddharth Patankar's video). But I am surprised that Britax haven't made a statement, or identified what went wrong in production, or if more units of that seat are affected.

Originally Posted by WheelsOnFire

I don’t understand how an unstable body and footwell gives Verna 5 stars as opposed to i20, Creta and Seltos which are based out of the same k2 platform. Any thoughts on this ?

Creta had footwell intrusion close to 100mm more than in the Verna. i20's driver airbag didn't perform as intended. Combine structural performance of the i20 and restraint system performance of the Carens, and you have a solid 4 star car with the old protocols. Add to that an excellent side impact, standard ESC and passable pedestrian protection, and with wider-ranging test criteria and those 4 stars become 5.

[07CR]

Originally Posted by aseem23

For all those who want to understand how GNCAP works, this video sums it up well. Make your own decision, and enjoy whichever car you choose as per requirements.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=-8hW...GaganChoudhary

I had my reservations on the GNCAP and their process. This video just validates my theory of not trusting Gncap with their rating process.

[TheFonz]

Originally Posted by aseem23

For all those who want to understand how GNCAP works, this video sums it up well. Make your own decision, and enjoy whichever car you choose as per requirements.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=-8hW...GaganChoudhary

All this video does is validate the choice of consumers who opted for unsafe cars and push more people towards them.
Had the video contained details of the tests their validity with respect to Indian environment and how it measures up to other protocols such as Latin NCAP, EURO NCAP etc then it would have been a constructive debate.
Instead what this content creator chooses to do is to simply nit pick through documents, talk about here say with erstwhile “ford” officials.

I have respect for this content creator, hence the healthy criticism

[chaitanyakrish]

Originally Posted by SoumenD

But even with a 5* rating Verna scores an unstable bodyshell?

You can check the video in this post.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-...ml#post5636618 (Made-in-India Hyundai Verna scores 5 stars in the Global NCAP!)

[SoumenD]

Originally Posted by chaitanyakrish

You can check the video in this post.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-...ml#post5636618 (Made-in-India Hyundai Verna scores 5 stars in the Global NCAP!)

I did see that. But still are we saying maruti took care of such intricacies in something as basic as Alto while hyundai didn’t in their premium offering?

[itzvicky201]

Kudos to Hyundai for getting the safety aspect clinched.

As many have already put their points above: Hyundai Verna's 5 star GNCAP rating is definitely a game changer to make competition take notice of how Indians view safety as an important aspect in their purchase.

God bless competition

The rider in the whole Hyundai Verna's GNCAP rating is definitely on the unstable body aspect, which will raise pointers for sure:

These are some from my side:

1. GNCAP is exiting from India's safer car campaign and giving rise to BNCAP (Bharat NCAP rating). BNCAP will be the norm going forward for benchmarking safety in new cars. Country's top automakers will now need to ensure that their products are BNCAP ready for getting customer's nod to safety.

Am I reading between the lines? Yes, I think, I do:

2. Look for the timing of GNCAP's 5 star rating to Hyundai and its exit from India and BNCAP getting formed. Our government's stand of not having 6 air bag mandatory in all cars will definitely feature in BNCAP's rating scheme and now with Hyundai's 5 star rating in Verna with a rider of unstable body, I am sure many after this test will not be able to understand how GNCAP really rates a car.

Is GNCAP giving a last shot in the arm for rating a car as 5 star with riders? Then in that case, let's be rest assured we are going to see more such ratings for new cars.

3. As fellow posts have already pointed out: Kia will quickly jump and say their latest offering is atleast a 4 star without even going for the GNCAP test. I would even expect Kia Seltos can be the first product to do a BNCAP test and get a safety rating (as expected). Maruti will soon join the race and am sure MSIL will be thinking on it quickly, to reduce unwanted questions from new prospects (who understands NCAP as their only knowledge about car safety)

4. To me, BNCAP is more or less a lobbying effort on safety for Indian roads with riders/deviations of how one would call from an "actual" safety tests like GNCAP. With the latest GNCAP test, I have serious doubt about the entire safety tests conducted.

5. German twins VAG and Skoda will definitely take a hit in the sales. They had safety as the biggest USP in advertising their product.

It is something like an old bollywood movie dialogue, imagining Koreans and German twins talking to each other:

"I have features, styling, interior design. What do you have? and the response I have GNCAP safety 5 star rating"

Hyundai's only complaint with all bells and whistles had only safety as an issue. Prospective car buyers will now just look GNCAP/BNCAP or any NCAP rating to confirm their intuition of buying a "Safe" car.

As experts quote: there is one thing which you cannot add to a car as an accessory and that is "Safety". Better body shell being the most important of them all.

If one drives responsibly with abiding traffic and lane rules in a highway or a city drive can itself save lives in our chaotic Indian roads. One might argue that there can be other instances of getting into an accident due to other's fault. I believe this can be avoided, if the rule#1 is followed.

[Hayek]

Delighted to see this outcome. We all know that Hyundai (and for that matter Toyota and Suzuki) know how to make safe cars. They would not be able to sell in the EU or Japan or America or even Korea without that.

It is just that they blatantly designed cars in a less safe manner for India to cut cost and boost margins, despite knowing that given their sales volumes, those less safe cars are statistically certain to kill some people. But finally, whether it is because they realised they are losing some sales due to negative publicity about poor GNCAP results, or because with the impending advent of a government sponsored BNCAP which may one day carry a stick, they decided to avoid “value engineering” the new Verna excessively. I do hope they test the face lifted Seltos and demonstrate a 5 star rating there too. This is a great result for Indian customers - and leaves the Maruti - Toyota combination as the only manufacturers who still design cars to kill customers.

Of course, nothing would delight me more than GNCAP publishing a result tomorrow which shows that the Grand Vitara is 5 star rated. Because then, Indian customers would be in a position to choose cars because they like to drive (or be driven in) them, not to reduce the statistical risk of being killed or maimed in an accident.

Safer cars for India would then lead to better cars for India too.

[BleueNinja]

Originally Posted by itzvicky201

5. German twins VAG and Skoda will definitely take a hit in the sales. They had safety as the biggest USP in advertising their product.

I think it will be a marginal hit and not a major one.

Here's the thing with VAG cars and their prospective buyers, the drive feel is what gets them to buy the car. I enquired with 2-3 folks who are first time VW/Skoda buyers in my locality and their reason was that they enjoyed the way the car drove and ofcourse safety is another added aspect.

Those who wanted best in class features were going for Verna, Creta & Seltos anyway regardless of their reputation. How I see salesmen pitching it is "Sir, creta is also a 5 star car because Verna and Creta are on same platform sir". They talk out of their hats and major chunk of people will lap it up.

The car I actually see taking a major hit is Honda City. City and Verna have been rivals since ages and now Verna has a good interior space, better set of features, an engine that's much better to drive and ofcourse officially being 5 star rated.

[Col Mehta]

I'm late to the party and I'm still rubbing my eyes!

Hyundai has addressed the weakest chink in their armour and how! I'm still skeptical about the unstable body shell though, but just a 5-star sticker on the car will literally smoke the competition.

Way to go, Hyundai!

[tirumalavoleti]

Absolutely amazing and unexpected from hyundai. Some credits to Tata and Mahindra for their initiatives driving the market and a pat on our forum for showing the importance(Seltos thread)

And this is a gem of a package. Hope the story repeats for Creta.

[jazzrockz]

Great job Mahindra & Tata!!!! For waking up the Car buyer.

[The Rationalist]

So Hyundai has bowed down to the sheer negative publicity they received! I will say that the major credit for this victory goes to GNCAP, then to team-bhp and other public forums and youtube channels which gave Hyundai a proper bashing and called a spade a spade.

With Tiago costing upwards of ₹6 lakh capable of scroing 4*, there are only 3 cars, Alto, S-presso & Kwid which are left with questionable safety below ₹6 lakh category. In another 5 years these 3 will be obsolete and we will be having a plethora of cars which are at least 4* rated. Hope Maruti, Toyota and Kia follow suit and at least produce 4* rated cars. Indians deserve that much for paying through the roof for cars.

PS: conspiracy theorists can say whatever, but the truth is that without GNCAP, we would have been taken for a ride by these giant multinationals. Just because a Youtuber has few millions followers doesn’t make him the authority on anything, any loudmouth can blabber on social media and can have millions of fools as followers. They aren’t accountable to anyone, their sole motive is clickbait titles, keep you glued for maximum time and get the coffers ringing. There are many genuine ones, but that is a rarity than a norm.