Prioritising
Safety: ANCAP
Part 2 of AfMA’s special series with ANCAP. In this issue we catch up
for a Q&A with ANCAP’s Director of Communications & Advocacy
Rhianne Robson.
WORDS BY DANIEL BRAID
AfMA: When did ANCAP first begin testing
vehicles within Australia? How long has it been
operating and how has it evolved?
ANCAP: Well we’ve been around for quite some
time now, close to 29 years. We were formed back
in 1992 and we issued our first safety ratings in the
following year in 1993. Today there are nine New Car
Assessment Programs around the world. ANCAP was
the second one, formed only behind the United States.
So in terms of the vehicles that we first rated under the
ANCAP program in the early 90s, they were really those
common models of the day.
We had the Ford Falcon, Holden Commodore,
Mitsubishi Magna, Toyota Camry, Nissan Pintara and
for good measure there was a Volvo. An interesting
point to note is that our safety ratings back then were
published based on a scale of Good, Acceptable,
Marginal and Poor, rather than the zero to 5-star rating
scale that we use today. It wasn’t until 1999 where
we actually saw star ratings introduced for the first
time, and that was following the establishment of our
European counterpart, Euro ANCAP.
10 ISSUE 23 2020 / WWW.AFMA.ORG.AU