The new Suzuki Jimny gets a lowly three-star safety rating for Australia and New Zealand.
The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) has rated the Jimny three stars on both GL and GLX variants sold here and across the Tasman, citing below-par crash structures, vulnerable road user protection and inadequate collision avoidance.
Scoring 73% in adult occupant protection, 84% in child occupant protection, 52% for vulnerable road user protection and just 50% for safety assistance, Jimny does score highly in child restraint installation (12/12), and both front (15.36/16) and side (8/8) dynamic crash tests in regards to child protection.
ANCAP says the Jimny might be a modern manufactured vehicle, but it does not live up to consumer safety standards.
“Engineers observed a number of issues in the frontal offset test including excessive deformation of the passenger compartment,” ANCAP chief executive James Goodwin says.
“Penalties applied for loss of structural integrity, steering wheel and pedal intrusion and knee injury risk,” he says.
According to ANCAP, the driver’s airbag was observed as allowing the crash test dummy to make contact with the steering wheel through “insufficient inflation”, which suggests more severe crashes at speeds greater than 64km/h could be fatal.
“The Jimny misses the mark with structural and design weaknesses, poor protection of pedestrians and cyclists, and lack of effective safety aids,” Goodwin says.
The Jimny’s autonomous emergency braking system does not come with cyclist detection and does not function at night, nor was its performance rated above “weak” for avoiding pedestrians, ANCAP reports. Active lane keep assistance and blind-spot monitoring are also unavailable, ANCAP notes.
“While marketed for off-road driving, these vehicles also spend much of their time on regular roads and buyers shouldn’t have to forego safety,” Goodwin says.
“Results show that the fundamentals of vehicle safety are still critical – simply fitting an AEB system is not enough to earn a good rating,” he adds.
In the 64km/h frontal offset test, the ‘driver’ suffers from “variable contact” with the vehicle itself, “concentrated loads” (eg. whiplash) and an “unstable passenger compart
ment”, according to the ANCAP technical report which shows “adequate”, “marginal” and “weak” driver protection overall.
Suzuki Australia general manager automotive, Michael Pachota tells AutoTalk the rating Jimny earned in EuroNCAP crashing testing, which supplies engineering data to base the ANCAP assessment on, isn’t ideal.
“Whilst the Jimny’s ENCAP rating is not at the maximum score, it still rated very well for a specialised 4×4 vehicle,” he says.
“I can guarantee you, this score won’t impact its success in market,” he adds.
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