BMW or Bust, 5 series gets failing grade

The 2008 BMW 5 Series was the worst performer in new side-impact crash tests of luxury sedans by the insurance industry.

The Acura RL, Kia Amanti and Volvo S80 all earned the highest safety rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, according to results released yesterday. The Cadillac STS and Mercedes E-Class earned the second-highest rating.

The tests were designed to show what would happen if a truck or sport-utility vehicle hit the side of the sedan at 50 kilometres an hour, the speed of a serious crash. Side-impact crashes are the most common type of fatal crash after a frontal crash, killing around 9,000 people on U.S. roadways in 2005, the institute said.

BMW spokesperson Thomas Plucinsky said the institute's test indicated the 5 Series has a strong body structure but the dummy was injured when it was hit by the arm rest. He said BMW does up to 12 crash tests on all its cars as well as computer simulations of crashes.

 
"The issue is that depending on the location of seat, the location of dummy, the location of the sled, the results could change," he said. "This was one test on one day on one car.''

Tests differ, too, even between NCAP partners. In the European side-impact test, for example, only 40 per cent of the vehicle width is impacted into a deformable barrier face, whereas in the United States - yes, just to confuse the issue, there is a federal NCAP there and the IIHS, as the name suggests, is an independent organisation which is wholly supported by insurance companies - the entire width is impacted into a flat, rigid wall. Euro NCAP say that their test is more representative of on-road accidents and therefore provides a more stringent test of the vehicle’s structural integrity and rigidity.