What women want

It’s certainly an impressive achievement, especially when you find out the other star-festooned car is four times the price of the Impreza.

But Subaru thinks this safety aspect is a feature they can use to market the little hatchback to mature professional women, because that woman 'cares about what happens to a pedestrian if she hits one’.

That’s a boot-load of absolute nonsense, of course.

Mature professional women don’t give a hoot what happens pedestrians. You only have to look at any shopping centre, office car park or early morning school drop-off zone to see that.

Are those places full of sleek little hatches with lots of gold safety stars?

No, they’re not. If there are any little hatches there, they are cowering out of sight among the army of monster offroaders purchased specifically for their ability to crush any obstacle — human or mechanical — that gets in their way.

The mature professional woman doesn’t want some kind of goody-two-tyres vehicle with padded bumpers and wibbly-wobbly windscreen wipers that will tenderly cosset any pedestrian inconsiderate enough to stray onto its bonnet.

What she wants is an urban assault vehicle designed to mow people down and shunt other cars into the next postcode.

The only thing she cares about if she hits a pedestrian is to make sure no detached arms and legs get snagged in the undercarriage where they might cause messy problems.

Her perfect car should at least carry a huge bull-bar with razor sharp spikes and preferably a cow-catcher scoop to toss what’s left of the target over onto the footpath.

On the other hand, leaving a couple of victims impaled on the front end might serve as a gentle warning to the rest of the pedestrian population.

A set of full metal tank tracks could be just the thing to let her simply grind up and over any rush hour traffic jam — and they certainly wouldn’t look out of place on most offroaders.

And there’d be no exasperating delays at zebra crossings if a machine gun was on the optional accessories list, although it would be hard to choose between the handy extra trajectory offered by roof mounting or the convenience and better aerodynamics of 007-style artillery hidden in the headlights.

No, the mature professional woman doesn’t want a pedestrian-friendly safety superstar for a car. She wants an armoured personnel carrier with a decent sized glovebox, multiple cupholders and an illuminated vanity mirror.