Volkswagen Arteon Gets 5-Star Euro NCAP Rating as Standard

You might think that five stars are standard, but they haven't been this year. For example, the Ford Mustang just scored three, although the IIHS did say muscle cars are dangerous. Nowadays, you have to equip your car with active safety systems as standard or risk losing a star, as it happened to the TT, which is based on the same platform as the Arteon.

Volkswagen isn't making any risk plays with its 4 Series GC rival - price, practicality, resale value and all its available technology.

Over the intervening years, the crash test procedures have been continually made tougher. A pre-2009 car like the Passat CC (it was never tested) might get three stars or less due to the severity of the side impacts, pedestrian and whiplash tests.

Looking past the headline, we noticed an undeniable preoccupation with crashworthiness for the German engineers that made the Arteon. For example, the 96% adult occupant protection is among the highest we've ever seen. You can see that in the crash video where the nose crumbles, but everything from the pillar back stays the same. And because the 5-meter coupe is so big, there's plenty of room to install door and sill braces to score lots of pole test numbers. Even passengers in the back were taken into consideration.

The 85% pedestrian protection is also impressive. So even though that front end doesn't emotions (at least not good ones), it's the car equivalent of being hit with a soft pillow.

In the 'Safety Assist' category, the Arteon also exceeded requirements, gaining 82 percent of the possible points. Consolidated into the assessment were the standard features, such as the Front Assist area monitoring system with emergency braking function, including for pedestrians, and the lane keeping system.