Quite frankly, we shouldn't be concerned about the wellbeing of Indian drivers, especially when they bought brand new cars. However, the level of standard safety equipment there is horrible. A car with airbags and a stiff body shell is considered luxurious. As part of the Global NCAP initiative, the new Datsun Go and Maruti Suzuki Swift were subjected to frontal crash tests, which they failed miserably.
Let's start by looking at the new Datsun Go, which is the first budget model launched after Nissan revived its old brand. The car was tested by Bharat NCAP, a safety body recently established for the benefit of the fifth largest car market in the world, India.
The Go completely collapsed during a frontal test done at 64 km/h (40 mph). All sorts of bad things happened, like the seats folding, the dash moving by about a foot into the cabin and the crash dummy slamming into the steering wheel.
Did the airbags not deploy? The Datsun Go is sold without any of those and if it had airbags, it would still fail the tests. Global NCAP Secretary-General, David Ward, said the body structure is so fragile that airbags would do absolutely nothing.
As for the Maruti Suzuki Swift it did the exact same thing. Fortunately, the company does offer airbags… as an option.
What's really scary about these two cars is that they aren't bought by millionaires who know what they're doing, like the Pagani Huayra. Probably a few hundreds of thousands of families in India will buy these two cars, which are among the most popular on the market. They do that not because they don't know about the risks, but because they can't afford anything else.
Because the local government imposes huge taxes on imports, most European cars are knocked made from knocked down kits. Makes us wonder if Indian BMW 3 Series or Audi Q5 aren't deathtraps as well.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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