Wheels Active Safety Program 2008: Results

Wheels Active Safety Program 2008: Results

Wheels Magazine
March, 2008

FORD FALCON XR6: Benchmark
You'd think a performance car would take on a bunch of popular 'regular' cars and hurl them to the floor. Overall, XR6 did just that ... but individually, it didn't.

If it hadn't been exempt from competing, the XR6 would have won WASP overall (comfortably, with a two-point lead from the Mazda3) but in doing so it would not have taken out a single gold medal in any test - at least one of the field was always better than the XR6 in each discipline.

Aurion trumped the XR6 in overtaking, whipping to 100km/h from 60km/h 0.36 seconds faster. The XR6's stablemate, Focus, out-lane-changed the otherwise hard-charging Falcon by a slim 2km/h successful entry margin. Mazda3 (27.58 seconds) and Aurion (27.79 seconds) out-pointed the XR6 (28.01 seconds) over a hot lap, while Corolla, Mazda3 and Astra poked their noses through the slalom quicker.

Half the field thumbed its nose at the XR6 in the steady state cornering test and the dry brake, despite the performance Falcon's 245/40R18 rubber. In fact, the average G of the whole field in steady cornering was 0.78 G; the XR6 managed just 0.79 - the three place getters overall, plus Civic and Corolla did better. Under brakes from 100km/h, the average stopping distance for all 13 contenders was 41.9 metres. The XR6 managed 41.6 metres, just 300mm above average, and behind Yaris (38.7m), Corolla (40.3m), Mazda3 (40.8m), Astra (41.2m), Civic (41.3m) and even RAV4 (41.5m).

For a big car, the XR6 rewards with excellent reversing vision, and would have claimed fifth spot, with only the three place getters overall and Getz in front.

As an all-rounder the XR6 is one of the most affordable crash-avoiders you can buy. Like most performance cars (provided you're not exploiting all its dynamic potential) it offers you safety margins well beyond ordinary cars.

If you're looking for context, maybe you should consider this: cars and SUVs are apples and oranges - difficult to compare directly. RAV4 is a fairly capable SUV. When we WASP-tested SUVs in January last year, Territory (a former Wheels Car of the Year) came third to RAV4's fifth, with a 1.4 percent split the margin - in other words, they're very close.

Here, with a different (hopefully more relevant) mix of tests, the tables are turned, at least dynamically. The RAV4 and Territory finished the six dynamics tests with the margin just 0.21 percent RAV's way.

Reversing vision scuttled it overall: that high, centrally mounted spare tyre might look good, but it really hurts one's ability to see small children at the rear. Let's not forget that vehicles like the RAV4 are targeted at young families as the de facto family station wagon, so their proximity to young children is likely to be higher than average. The Ford, even with its reversing camera negated offers 450mm less rearward space in which to lose sight of an average two-year-old playing behind the vehicle.

The news isn't all bad. RAV4 offers great brakes and competent overtaking ability. Swerving around Skippy is something you probably don't want to do in a RAV4, however. The highest speed it managed in our controlled highway lane-change test was 101km/h; the top-ranking Focus managed the same manoeuvre at 121km/h.

First, dynamics: The Territory's on-limit performance isn't likely to differ significantly between AWD and RWD versions. The feel on the limit might be different, but the absolute objective performance of the platform will likely be very similar - especially as both variants come standard with ESP and the same tyre specification (235/60R17) is common across the range (except for the Turbo model).

Think AWD means more grip? It doesn't, as our repeated objective testing has demonstrated. AWDs transition more progressively from grip to slip in many situations, leading to the common misconception that AWD equals more grip. AWD is a little more confidence-inspiring for some at the limit. It also splits torque four ways, making heavy-throttle applications less likely to induce wheelspin. But more absolute grip? Nope.

On dynamics alone, Territory came an honest 12th, a position that remained unchanged with the reversing vision test factored in. Interestingly, had the Ghia AWD been the market's top seller, the Territory would have received the full five points for reversing, and placed eighth. In other words, it would have copped a big lift.

The silver lining for Territory is that it's a swift overtaker. Its big six punched it into third slot in the 60-100km/h overtaking test, slashing wrong-side exposure. And it remains a seriously capable SUV, as WASP '07 proved.

Hyundai's entry-level hatchback ranked 11th overall, making it the lowest placed car, ahead only of the two SUVs - Territory (12th) and RAV4 (13th).

A direct comparison with the Yaris (second-placed overall) proves that dynamic ability doesn't elude all small, budget-priced cars. It placed nine spots ahead of the Getz, or 10 if only dynamics are considered.

The Getz placed second-last in emergency braking, with a stopping distance of 43.7 metres while the Yaris was the best stopper, pulling-up from 100km/h in 38.7 metres.

On the lateral G circle the Getz placed 11th, the Yaris third. It was trounced again in the slalom - Getz down in 12th, Yaris 4th.

The fact both the comparatively underpowered Yaris and Getz tested were also slugged with autos further explains their poor overtaking results. In the Getz you spend 176 metres on the wrong side of the road, while the Yaris is little better at 149 metres - they placed last and second-last respectively. The hot lap then served only to compound the Hyundai's lack of urge and lacklustre dynamics - no surprise that it placed last - while the Yaris claimed sixth.

Thanks to its compact size, lack of a boot and generally decent rear vision, the Hyundai's one saving grace was its second place in the reversing vision test - our test child was visible as close as 1.74 metres to the rear of the car, compared with 1.63 metres for the first-placed Astra.

What a pleasant surprise it is that the new model tested here cries out for no such harsh criticisms. It's a rare case of advertising imitating truth: the new Lancer is, as the commercials allege, better. Substantially so.

CVT transmissions might take the market a while to adapt to, but there are advantages to engines being continuously on-song. With Lancer's CVT, you open the throttle and it's all there at the right revs and the drop of a hat, confirmed in cold, hard data by the Lancer's blinding overtaking result. The CVT four-potter ripped up the virtual wrong side from 60-100km/h in just 118.4 metres and there were only the hot sixes - Aurion, Commodore and Territory - ahead of it.

The high-speed lane-change test was where the Lancer really hit its stride - dead-heating the razor-sharp Mazda3, and beaten by only Focus and Aurion. This result smacks of a spot-on ESP-assist for Lancer, which has it standard across the range. Most people think ESP 'merely' prevents loss of control, but in reality if it's tuned right it helps cars swerve severely, too. When the driver makes a rapid steering input, ESP interprets this as an urgent request for evasive response, and reacts by selectively braking inside wheel(s) to induce yaw more rapidly than steering alone can. Lancer's ESP obviously gets this right.

Things aren't so rosy in the slalom, however. And the Lancer on 10th isn't quite as sharp as direct competitors Corolla, Mazda3, Astra and Civic - though, frankly they're all pretty close, with the top 10 split by just 0.8 seconds (under nine percent).

Least justifiable is perhaps Lancer's reversing vision result, with safety caving in to style (in the absence of regulation on the issue). Here the Mitsu, at 12th, got smashed by everything except RAV4, delivering 5.3 metres more real estate than the test-winning Astra does in which to lose a two-year-old child.

» 9th PLACE: Toyota Camry Altise
Camry should be available in one colour only: beige, with a beige interior and matching mats. Then the colour would match the performance beautifully. Camry is, clearly, benchmarked for the zero-passion set. It does everything, well, reasonably - as our tests demonstrated.

Interestingly, if that's the right word, Camry beat Aurion in three tests. Under brakes from 100km/h Camry pulled up in 42.1 metres, 0.4m (think: width of a pram) ahead of Aurion. Both cars run the same tyre specification, right down to the load rating (Dunlop SP Sport 300 in 215/60R16 95V). The difference is pretty obvious: mass, with Camry Altise at 1450kg appreciably more svelte than Aurion at 1590kg.

The second test where Camry beat Aurion was a right thrashing in the slalom. The Altise put in another beige medal-winning performance for eighth place, smashing Aurion's 13th-placed position by a margin of four percent. Much of Aurion's 140kg extra heft is up the front, adding four percent to its slalom time ... or subtracting four percent from its margin of swerve-avoid-recover safety at conventional urban speeds, depending on how you see it.

Camry and Aurion were a photo-finish in max-G, with just one one-hundredth of a G the split (Camry's way).

With buyers running away from the big family car, what happens to crash-avoidance capability when buyers swap the Commodore for the Camry? Camry is better under brakes from 100 by 0.9 metres (two prams worth). Camry offers more cornering grip, by the barest margin, but can't swerve as well as Commodore in urban or highway contexts. And anything involving grunt, such as overtaking, is a no-brainer, Commodore's way.

Downsizing from Commodore to Camry means getting less of a few things, as you'd expect. Unfortunately one of those things includes 1.65 metres less vision of a two-year-old child to the rear.

» 8th PLACE: Honda Civic VTi
The Civic was actually better than its eighth-overall rank suggests. Kinda. Despite a strong showing in five of the six dynamics tests, with top-six results in the brake, circle and slalom tests, among others, a poor result in the high-speed lane change dragged its score down. And quite rightly, we might add - sure-footed high-speed dynamics are an absolutely vital part of a vehicle's crash-avoidance skill set.

Interestingly, and going against the popular perception that smaller cars are more agile, the Honda managed an entry speed of just 105km/h into the lane-change exercise - just 3 and 4km/h better than Territory and RAV4 respectively - before its rear end started doing the pendulum thing. Every vehicle you could expect might beat it here, did, with the exception of the Corolla. This result was at odds with the Honda's solid performance in the slalom (sixth), demonstrating that swerve and recover ability is speed-dependent.

The Civic's reversing vision was poor for a small car - our 'average-height two-year-old' was obscured at any closer than 5.43 metres from the rear bumper, which placed the Honda ninth. Incredibly, its result here even put it behind the much larger Territory and Commodore.

Despite the 1240kg Civic VTi being lumped with an auto-backed 1.8, it put its 103kW/174Nm to excellent use in the overtaking discipline, ranking a credible sixth, beaten only by the sixes and the 2.0-litre Lancer and Mazda3.

Similarly, the hot-lap test favoured the more powerful cars, but here the Honda's blend of capable dynamics (below 100km/h, at least) and moderate straight-line acceleration saw it rank fifth ahead of Commodore and Territory and trailing only the Corolla, Focus, Mazda3 and the hard-charging V6 Aurion.

» 7th PLACE: Holden Commodore Omega
It's not at all gratifying for the quintessential big, Aussie car tailor-made for big, Aussie conditions to be carved up so royally in a simulated 100km/h emergency stop - by a Yaris. Yet that's how our testing panned out. The Commodore delivered a less-than-inspiring highway brake performance - 43.0 metres, for 10th place. Yaris managed a blinder - 38.7 metres. Don't forget, these stops aren't one-offs. To eliminate anomalies, two mutually consistent brake test results were required before we'd accept them. The difference is 4.3 metres - exactly halfway between the length of the Commodore (4.894m) and the Yaris (3.750m).

The Commodore's max-G test result was somewhat tarnished as well, bettering only the performance of Getz and the two SUVs. However, as is often the case for cars that leave a little to be desired in the outright cornering department, the Commodore embraced directional change - importantly at both urban and highway speeds.

In the slalom it placed fifth - knocking off big brethren Camry and Aurion (and the two SUVs) and putting in their place some smaller contenders you might think would have an edge here, such as Focus, Civic and Lancer.

At highway speeds, it's the same story (almost): Commodore beats Camry and both SUVs, but not Aurion, which pulled off a killer lane change. Unbelievably, Yaris dead-heated Commodore here, equalling the Holden on roo-missing capability - both managing just above the conventional divided road speed limit at 111km/h over our tightly controlled lane-change course.

Obviously, Commodore's overtaking potential is awesome - it took second place behind the slightly pokier Aurion. And in reversing vision, the big Holden at 4.64 metres (call it a car length) put some smaller and, you might otherwise think safer, reversing contenders to shame - notably Civic (5.43m), Aurion (5.76m), Camry (6.29m) and Lancer (6.90m).

» 6th PLACE: Toyota Corolla Ascent
Corolla's overall ranking was one of the few that was unaffected by its performance in reversing vision, the one static test of the seven. No matter whether on the move or stationary, it came sixth.

Dynamically, Corolla's ranking is a combination of four really excellent performances and two relatively deficient ones. It excelled at emergency braking (2nd), outright grip (2nd), and slalom (1st). Excellence continued into the Corolla's hot lap (3rd), despite not offering a compelling power-to-weight ratio. It hot-lapped, incredibly, within a quarter of a second of the XR6 benchmark car.

Unfortunately, it dropped the ball on both overtaking potential (only Astra, Yaris and Getz were slower) and in the high-speed lane change (compare Lancer's result). Had it aced these, you'd be seeing it on the podium.

You'd think a vehicle capable of swerving with the best of them at urban speeds - and Corolla is mightily capable there - would at the very least demonstrate competence in a similar vein at highway speeds. But this isn't the case with Corolla (and a couple of others). Corolla's best successful entry speed into the lane change was a paltry 103km/h, and it bettered only the two SUVs.

Because Toyota owns so much of the market (call it a quarter) there are five of them in this field. Their competencies at the high-speed lane change test ranged from magnificent (Aurion, 2nd) to middle-of-the-road (Yaris, 5th; Camry, 8th) and lacklustre (Corolla, 11th, RAV4, 13th). It makes you wonder what internal dynamic benchmarks exist.

The global engineering shortage and our local unique engine/transmission combination for Corolla (shared only with the Canary Islands) means it's taking quite a while for Toyota to calibrate an ESP system for Australia-bound models - when that happens, it's likely the car's high-speed lane changing ability will improve. Aside from the obvious life-saving potential, Corolla really deserves a shot in the arm on the highway swerve-avoid routine because otherwise, it's a really sharp package.

» 5th PLACE: Ford Focus CL hatch
Of all the market's big sellers, you stand the highest chance of avoiding a roo, errant pedestrian, whatever (and, importantly, regaining control) in the Focus. It ripped out an absolute pearler of a high-speed lane change, entering at a blistering 121km/h and successfully completing the manoeuvre without 'killing' a cone - that's a full 20km/h faster than the last-placed RAV4 could manage. It boils down to rather a lot of highway safety margin. Aurion (2nd) managed it 4km/h slower, and Mazda 3 (3rd) was 9km/h behind the Focus - that's a big spread that did the Focus a few favours in the final tally.

As a rough guide, the Focus has the capacity to swerve something like 45 percent harder than the RAV4 on the limit at highway speeds. That's because small changes in speed make a big difference to cornering loads.

Ninth in the outright cornering test looks somewhat, umm, unfocused, but isn't. In fact, because of the relative closeness of the G-circle lap times, the first 10 performers all scored more than 19 out of a possible 20 there. In the lane change, third place was already well into the 18s - the brake, slalom and hot lap were also close, especially for the front-runners. The result of which is that nailing the lane change really helped Focus along for an overall dynamic fourth despite a string of 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th places in slalom, emergency brake, overtaking and outright cornering capability, respectively.

One relatively poor result was in overtaking. It took the Focus a massive 135 metres to jump from 60-100km/h (Aurion, 1st, took just 81 metres). Most telling comparison here is Lancer VR CVT versus Focus CL manual. Weight-to-power ratios are line-ball (Lancer's 11.81kg/kW versus Focus's 11.85kg/kW are well within one percent variation) but the Lancer steams from 60-100km/h in 5.31 seconds (4th) ahead of Focus's 6.11 seconds for 8th place.

» 4th PLACE: Toyota Aurion AT-X
Whenever power increased performance in WASP, Aurion excelled. It out-paced our XR6 Falcon benchmark car between 60 and 100km/h, and also punched its way around the hot lap course about 0.2 seconds faster. Ouch.

It didn't quite beat the XR6 through the high-speed lane change, but it pulled out a successful 117km/h entry speed against the XR6's best of 119. Credit where it's due: the Falcon benchmark car runs on comparatively esoteric 245/40R18 performance tyres that threaten to kick sand in the face of the Aurion's 215/60R16s - if only on paper. It's much closer than you'd think in the real world.

There's a similar story under brakes, with the Falcon 0.9 metres in front from 100km/h to zero - but an impressive result Aurion's way once you've handicapped it for tyres.

Aurion's brilliant high-speed lane-changing ability (2nd, behind Focus) makes its wooden spoon in the slalom all the more difficult to believe. Its philosophy is the exact opposite of Corolla's on transient G. Corolla is a brilliant exponent of the low-speed slalom (1st place) but backs that up with an inexplicable 11th in the high-speed lane change. Go figure.

When you consider the dynamic tests alone, Aurion top-scored the field. However, its method of winning was clinically bipolar - with a blistering first in the overtaking test backed up by a pair of seconds in lane change and hot lap. Then its mood changed, and it became a back-marker in the brake, circle and slalom tests (admittedly the field was very compressed here).

The seeds of Aurion's transition to fourth place overall were sown, grown and reaped looking backwards - it came 10th in a widely spread field in the reversing vision test, offering one full car length of additional driveway in which to lose a hypothetical two-year-old behind the car compared with the winning Astra.

» 3rd PLACE: Holden Astra CD
When most people think about serious crashes, images of walking-pace events with absolutely no panel damage seldom come to mind. Yet this is exactly what happens when a car cleans up a kid in the driveway. The enormity of it is made worse because the injured child is often a relative of the driver. These events generally don't make the front page but they're common enough (occurring once a week on average). Parents, hold that thought.

Astute observers of the WASP scoring process will note that, on dynamic tests alone, Astra rates a comparatively lowly seventh. What elevated it to the bronze medal was its second-to-none result in the reversing visibility test. A two-year-old child remains visible behind the car right down to 1.6 metres - an impressive result, particularly when compared to similar-sized vehicles like Civic (5.43 metres), Camry (6.29 metres) and Lancer (6.9 metres).

WASP is a test of crash-avoidance capability, not just dynamics. Reversing vision rates a maximum of five points out of the 100 on offer. It just so happens that, at stumps, the entire field spread out over about eight points - and the reversing vision field spread out over something like 3.9 points. That means reversing vision results, though small, had the capacity to upset the dynamics apple-cart. The cards simply fell Astra's way, in just the same way as they didn't, for example, with Aurion.

Some might feel jaded that the scoring process allows such last-minute re-jigging. We'd submit that a driveway run-over is every bit as terrible as shunting a power pole, and in a lot of ways it's all the more preventable.

Astra is quite competent at emergency braking and both steady and transient cornering at urban speeds. It's a glacial overtaker, however, and mediocre at the high-speed lane change and the hot lap. But when it comes to seeing a child at the rear, Astra is absolutely unbeatable.

» 2nd PLACE: Toyota Yaris YRS
Don't brake-test anyone in a Yaris; you'll probably lose. That's not what you want to hear when you've just forked out for an XR6 ... but it's true. Yaris's first leg-up the WASP dynamics ladder was its overwhelmingly brilliant emergency stop from 100km/h. It was the only vehicle to smash the 40-metre barrier (including the XR6 benchmark car), pulling up in 38.7 metres. That gave it a massive edge over Corolla in second, at 40.3 metres, and Mazda 3 in third at 40.8 metres - and, of course, daylight separated it from the Territory, at 44.3 metres.

A credible third in max-G saw Yaris trade just 0.3 points off the 20 on offer to the winning Mazda3, while a fourth in the slalom meant paring just 0.51 points away from the maximum possible 20. Even a fifth in the high-speed lane change saw only 1.65 points fall, with Yaris 10km/h down on the Focus's best successful entry speed of 121km/h. (Yaris also tied with Commodore here, incredibly.)

A sixth in the hot lap with Yaris on 28.8 seconds was still in close-ish proximity to Mazda3, which won on 27.6 seconds. Yaris lost just 0.22 points as a result.

Overtaking? Not flash. Twelfth ranking placed it 1.1 seconds ahead of its only direct marketplace competitor, Getz (13th), in the sprint from 60-100km/h, with the result seeing Yaris spending 68 additional metres more on the wrong side than Aurion in first place. Yaris kissed 4.5 points goodbye from the 10 on offer as a result.

Of the six dynamic tests alone, Yaris came home in third place overall. But a strong finish in reversing vision - third, just half a metre behind Astra in first - saw Yaris trading off just 1.2 points out of five in a field that stretched all the way back to RAV4 almost five metres behind the winner.

Toyota's most diminutive offering certainly doesn't scrimp on crash-avoidance capability, and proves that small and affordable is absolutely not the same thing as cheap.

» 1st PLACE: Mazda3 Maxx Sport
The XR6 benchmark car might be the one running on premium 245/40 rubber but, incredibly, the Mazda3, on its comparatively diminutive 205/55 tyres, gets its nose under the XR6's in the braking duel from 100. The split is just 0.8 metres, or two percent - but for crash-avoidance context, you might think of it as it twice the width of a runaway pram. The mighty Mazda also nudges XR6 aside in both the max-G test and the slalom - that is, in terms of on-limit performance at conventional urban speeds.

Distil it all down and you get rather a lot of in-built real-world active safety margin in a comfortable package that's easy on both the eyes and the wallet.

The Mazda3 also out-hot lapped the XR6, and that has to wound the Falcon's pride possibly more than all its other insults against XR6's character combined.

In fact, the Maxx Sport 3 was a front-running place-getter in every dynamic test except overtaking potential, where its peak outputs of 108kW and 182Nm were
wedged behind the eight-ball of its 1264kg kerb mass.

Not a happy combination, frankly - but fair for the price. The overtaking potential of Aurion, Commodore, Territory and Lancer - and XR6, naturally - blew the otherwise mightily composed Mazda away.

A fourth place in reversing vision wasn't too shabby, either. Our two-dimensional on-test two-year-old's head disappeared 84cm earlier than it did in the mirror of the rear-vision-winning Astra, with Getz and Yaris also ahead - but almost five metres of additional danger zone existed by the time the rear of the reversing vision field was reached.

The one cloud on the Mazda3's otherwise rosy horizon is its space-saver spare tyre, a significant active-safety shortfall discussed in the conclusion. In every other measure, it's a massively competent crash-avoider.

Read more on the Wheels Active Safety Program here:

WASP 2008 Tests: Hits and misses ...

WASP 2008 Results: The Wash-up

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