VW Golf keeps five crash stars

Active safety technology in the upcoming Volkswagen Golf has it retaining five-star crash-test rank, but not all of it will be standard. The seventh generation of the Volkswagen model goes on sale late this month and will have a number of active safety systems above the class norm.

The Golf will have an active cruise control system and the city safe automatic emergency braking system and multi-collision braking, which automatically applies the brakes after an impact to prevent any further incidents.

Volkswagen Australia spokesman Karl Gehling says the multi-collision braking system would be standard range-wide on the new Golf but the other features would be part of an option pack. "Adaptive cruise control and city emergency brake are part of the driver assistance package, multi-collision brake is a standard feature across all Golfs," he says.

Mr Gehling says the cheaper Up has city emergency brake as standard but it will be optional on the more expensive Golf. "Obviously we'd love to put standard features on all of our cars, but obviously from a consumer price-point we wanted a competitive vehicle and it's by no means a standard for the class," he says.

Mr Gehling says the Golf has a lot of other standard features that are not on the Up that will be in the Golf. "It's very good for our customers - you can look at it as a negative or a positive for the customer, we have to achieve a market-competitive product and we're looking to have a well-specified but also an affordable car ... you have to find the right balance," he says.

The crash test results, sourced from the European New Car Assessment Program's tests of a left-hand-drive petrol model - the European results apply to Australasian petrol variants, says ANCAP, but VW says there is no difference between the petrol and diesel variants.

ANCAP chairman Lauchlan McIntosh says the car's structure and features rated highly under the testing regime. “In addition to performing very well in each of the physical crash tests conducted on the Golf, this next-generation model carries Golf forward with advanced safety technologies including radar-based adaptive cruise control, city emergency braking, as well as a multi-collision braking system,” he says.

A five-star car since 2005, the Golf's safety features list has seven airbags - a driver's knee, dual front, front-side and curtain airbags - anti-lock brakes and stability control. The EOS is the only model in the Volkswagen passenger car range not to rank five stars under the ANCAP testing regime.

Recently awarded World Car of The Year, the new Golf offers “acceptable” driver leg protection and “good” on frontal and side-impact tests, scoring full marks for the latter. The crash test results stated the passenger compartment held its shape well in the frontal offset test, all doors remained closed during the test and all doors could be opened with normal effort after impact.

Pedestrian impact protection was less impressive - the front bumper scored maximum points for pedestrian leg protection, but the front edge of the bonnet scored “marginal” protection levels - scoring 23.5 from a maximum 36 points.

“Protection was good in most areas of the bonnet likely to be struck by the head of a child but the protection offered to the head of an adult was predominantly poor or marginal,” the test results say.