The Australian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) has introduced date stamps to be added together with the star ratings to show to consumers the year the test was done. This is to facilitate new car buyers to “identify the requirements against which each car that has been tested.” The new ratings published from July will have a date stamp added.
The ANCAP’s regulations are revised annually where each year the authorities increase its safety requirements in-line with the rapidly progressing car safety technology. The rating system however remains status quo, meaning cars will be scored within the one- to five-star categorization. This will allow consumers to have a clearer visual reference with the ANCAP safety rating of a vehicle with the date stamps.
“Each year a rating is a different rating,” said ANCAP chairman Lauchlan McIntosh. “When people buy a car they want to know they’ve bought a car with the latest rating. That’s the idea with the date stamps.”
“Consumers are now well aware of ANCAP and its one- to five-star safety rating system and are interested to know how a five-star rating of earlier years compares with a five-star rating of today.The date stamps provide consumers with a clear visual reference as to the ANCAP safety rating of the vehicle.” he said.
Manufacturers who progressively invested on car safety technologies will see their progress with the annually revised ANCAP crash test scoring system.
Closer to home, Proton so far has four cars tested by ANCAP – Preve (five-star rating), Exora (four-star rating) and the Suprima S (five-star rating). The cars were tested in 2013 which is based on 2013 regulations, hence by right these models will receive the ANCAP rating with date stamps to indicate they were tested in 2013. Also, should these cars opt for a retest in 2015, they may risk of obtaining a lower score than the one they received earlier, due to the annual regulatory changes of ANCAP.
[Post UPDATED to remove Proton Iriz as at 3pm 5/9/2014 following clarification from ANCAP (see comments below) ]
[Source: CarAdvice]
