(Wed 25 Nov 09)

Safety organisation Euro NCAP has put twelve cars through its crash test programme, and ten of them have achieved the maximum overall rating of five stars.

One of them is the Chevrolet Cruze, and that is a spectacular result for the company formerly known as Daewoo. Chevrolet's Euro NCAP results in recent years have been absolutely dire - the Matiz in 2005 and Aveo in 2006 being particularly dreadful examples - but the Cruze did brilliantly, with a near-perfect 96% rating for adult occupant protection. "In the past three years, Chevrolet's safety engineers have clearly made laudable investments in safety," said Euro NCAP, and Secretary General Dr Michiel van Ratingen singled out the manufacturer for special praise.

The Chevrolet Spark city car, which will go on sale in the UK next spring, very nearly managed five stars too, but was penalised because ESP (Electronic Stability Program) is not available as standard on any version.

The other five-star performers were the BMW X1, Citroen DS3, Infiniti FX, Mazda3, Mercedes-Benz E-Class and GLK, Vauxhall Astra, Peugeot 5008 and Volkswagen Scirocco. If you've been keeping score so far, you'll have spotted that that's eleven cars. The twelfth is the Toyota Urban Cruiser, which managed only three stars, largely because of a poor 58% score for adult occupant protection. In contrast to the Chevrolet situation, the Urban Cruiser is a big disappointment after a strong run of five-star Toyotas.

Toyota, which fully expected the Urban Cruiser to be the latest in the line, is having discussions with Euro NCAP on a technical matter in one part of the test procedure, so we may hear more about this in future.

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