Andrew Hamilton's weekly motoring clinic.
Safety ratings
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Dublin readers Orla Gorman and David Byrne have been in touch about the safest cars. Orla wonders if there is a league of safe cars. "I see pictures of crashed cars in the papers and I get a horrified feeling, thinking if myself and my children were in one of these cars."
David Byrne asks for the latest independent crash results test. We assume he is referring to the Euro NCAP programme released last November. The Euro NCAP assessors revealed the crash performance of 12 big-selling models from the supermini, small hatch, family car and family MPV segments.
NCAP is a thoroughly independent crash-testing programme. The research actually comprises three tests: an offset frontal impact at 40mph; a 31mph side impact with a deformable barrier and a pole test which replicates hitting a tree at 18mph.Performances are scored out of 34 with the figures converting into a star rating from one to five.
Most of the contenders - they included the Ford Mondeo, BMW 3-series and Peugeot 307 - posted a string of creditable three and four-star ratings. None matched the performance of the Renault Laguna with five stars, repeating a success which it achieved in a similar NCAP test just a year ago.
Other French cars also showed up well. Both the Citroën C5 and the European Car of the Year 2002, the Peugeot 307, scored 30 points and four stars. However, the Alfa 147, European Car of the Year 2001, didn't do well in the front impact test - it got only 21 points out of 34. Two of the oldest cars in the test, the Peugeot 406 and Rover 25, fared even worse, with 18 and 17 points respectively
Euro NCAP researchers, while acknowledging that there was a good overall standard, felt manufacturers continued to under-perform in a number of areas. They said car owners were not sufficiently warned of the danger of fitting a child seat in front of a passenger airbag: they want clearer in-car warnings. Seat belts in any accident situation, were "critical" and they think non-load limiting front belts and rear central lap belts should be consigned to history.
Aside from the top-scoring five-star Renault Laguna, subject of this week's road test, here's the crash test roll call with points out of 34:
Citroën C5.........................................30
Peugeot 307......................................30
Volvo S60..........................................28
Ford Mondeo.....................................27
Honda Stream...................................26
BMW 3-series....................................25
Skoda Octavia...................................25
Opel Vectra.......................................24
Alfa Romeo 147................................21
Hyundai Elantra................................20
Peugeot 406.....................................18
Rover 25...........................................17
Insuring a second car
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David Gill, Michael Jameson and Delia Byrne have been in touch with us looking for the contact numbers for Carol Nash. It will be recalled that last week a reader, Philip O'Toole, had a suggestion for David Bradley who was finding it almost impossible to insure a second car. Philip helpfully suggested buying a classic car and insuring it under a 4,000-mile limited policy with Carol Nash.
There are two Freephone numbers, one for quotations and the other for customer service - 1 800 298 550 and 1 800 298 551.
No-frill cars
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James Nolan from Cork City recalled reading some weeks ago in MOTORS about no-frills motoring. He isn't too interested in keeping up an appearance and in MOTORS we recommended a couple of cars to fit that bill.
Indeed we did. We were actually writing about van-derived cars such as the Renault Kangoo Kar and the Citroën Berlingo Multispace and we likened them to the old Renault 4L which many of us remember as not very stylish but a tremendous workhorse.
Both the Kangoo and the Berlingo Multispace are hugely spacious with high roofs. The Renault sells for €15,390 ex works for a 1.2 litre petrol version while there's a choice of 1.4 litre petrol or 1.9 litre diesel in the case of the Citroën: ex works prices are respectively €17,600 and €19,300.
Another van-derived car is due to join the two French ones in the coming months. Fiat's Doblo which is Turkish built and is doing well on the Irish light commercial scene, is going into passenger mode.
Street protest
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Jim Agnew from Dublin tells us he isn't sympathetic one iota to last week's Reclaim the Streets Protest protest. "We see what has happened where the streets have been reclaimed exclusively for pedestrians: they have become virtual no-go areas at night. Grafton Street is a prime example. With traffic it was admittedly congested but look how the quality of pedestrian life has deteriorated there since then. If they reclaim the streets, then a lot of us older Dubliners will have to stay out of the city permanently. At least we could feel a bit safer in our cars."