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  It is understood that Holden is confident of a five-star rating when cars are tested by the ANCAP laboritories in the next couple of weeks. Photo Gallery

Safety has been boosted in the Holden Ute range, which will now carry side and curtain airbags as standard equipment.

"This is the first time a curtain airbag has been offered in a utility in Australia and it will be standard across the entire ute range," Steve Curtis, GM Holden's manager for vehicle structure and safety says. "That's a total of six airbags in every ute ... the first light commercial in Australia to offer six airbags standard across the range."

Curtis wouldn't speculate on what the inclusion of the extra bags would mean for the utes' safety rating but it is understood that Holden is confident of a five-star rating when cars are tested by the ANCAP laboritories in the next couple of weeks. That would give the Commodore VE a full-range maximum five-star safety rating.

"We have an expectation of an outcome ... a good outcome, but it not something we predict publicly," Holden's director of marketing, Philip Brook, says. "The utes will be tested soon and that is when we will comment."

The program for additional side protection in the utes was a two-year commitment for Holden's engineers with teams in Melbourne, Spain and North America involved in the development. "One of the trickier issues was packaging for the curtain airbag," Curtis says. "Given the individual structure of the ute (with the cabin ending at the B-Pillar) positioning the inflator was one of the challenges."

While much of the program testing was computer simulated Curtis says that final validation was through real world crash tests to ensure correct calibration of the sensors located in the B-Pillar to recognise the impact and deploy the bag. "In side impacts with poles or other high-fronted vehicles a curtain airbag provides significantly more protection and the probability of occupant survival is considerably increased."

Recently Mercedes-Benz were the first to win a five-star rating for a commercial van after adding airbags to its Vito models, however the ute advancement is even more significant given the number sold each year and the widespread use of the ute as a sportscar substitute.