Wait, what happened there?
The nice people at Euro NCAP have once again spent their working weeks doing what we did as kids and throwing cars headlong against skirting boards. Well, sort of. Actually, what's happened is that the Citroen C4 Cactus, Mercedes-Benz V-Class and Nissan X-Trail have all been crash tested and the results are now public.
Didn't they do well?
Enough with the Brucie impressions - we've only just gotten rid of him from Strictly... Actually, they all did well enough. Those thinking that the C4 Cactus' four-star rating is a poor one should check the paperwork; the NCAP test has become much stricter lately and five-star ratings are now much rarer. In fact, only in one section of the pole impact test was the Cactus occupant protection anything other than good or adequate, although it did lose a few points on the pedestrian test.
The Mercedes, in spite of being basically a van with seats, did get a full five stars, and it scored a 93 per cent mark for adult occupant protection - exceptional considering it's a commercial vehicle underneath, and NCAP singled out its collision prevention assist system for extra praise.
The X-Trail put in a safety performance typical of a Renault-Nissan product with five stars and nary a weak point in the whole thing.
Neil Briscoe - 21 Oct 2014