Filed under: Sedans/Saloons, China, Euro, Safety
VIDEO: The Brilliance BS6's 3-star crash test
As we reported yesterday, Chinese automaker Brilliance appears to have addressed a number of the shortcomings in its BS6 sedan that caused it to spectacularly fail a Euro NCAP crash test conducted earlier this year by Germany's ADAC. The car has been re-tested, this time in Spain (again, according to Euro NCAP standards), and has now received a 3-star crash rating.
We now have video of the new test regimen, and it's embedded after the jump along with the original German one for comparison. As you can see, the BS6 fares much better this time around, with the car holding up a lot better from the A-pillar and back. In the photo above from China Car Times, the doors all opened properly following the crash. Whether other Chinese automakers will look at the Brilliance saga and learn from it is unknown. For its part, Brilliance appears to have learned a hard lesson. If you want to sell cars in lucrative Western markets, they need to perform better than papier mâché sculptures in crash tests.
Follow the jump for videos of the crash tests, old and new.
[Sources: YouTube, Autoblog Spanish, China Car Times]
Briliance BS6 Crash Test in Spain - 3 Stars
Briliance BS6 Crash Test in Germany- 1 Star
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
FLR 1:49PM (9/14/2007)
3 stars from 1. Good job on the engineering front.
Now, how long until the Chinese company starts cutting corners to save money again?
Sometime mid model year the cars could be painted with lead paint and crumple like tin foil.
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Ben 2:02PM (9/14/2007)
Once you have all the manufacturing tools and machine in place, it's probably much cheaper to "stay the course" than to cut corners.
Chinese are cheap, but they are not stupid.
Jonathan 2:07PM (9/14/2007)
Paint the car in lead, they probably will start forming the body panels out of lead to get rid of that lead that recylcing firms are sending to china.
I_hate_China 3:27PM (9/14/2007)
FLR
> Once you have all the manufacturing tools and machine in place, it's probably much cheaper to "stay the course" than to cut corners.
> Chinese are cheap, but they are not stupid.
I guess you don't know the Chinese too well.
Ben 3:47PM (9/14/2007)
Well maybe I don't, but you might want to pay a visit to Google or Microsoft's campus, you'll be surprised by what you find over there :)
Barney 7:37PM (9/14/2007)
Well Jonathan, It was not that long ago lead was used in paint EVERYWHERE and used instead of Bondo, lead for body repairs. You hear about lead in paint and behave like one, who had eaten to much lead.
Don 12:33AM (9/15/2007)
I love how all the fanboys screamed how "China sucks! They'll never compete!"
So much for that theory.
avus 2:03PM (9/14/2007)
its not the same model
notice that the 3star crash vehicle has no sunroof, but the german test one does
also notice how the roof buckles a bit where the sunroof would be
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jas12niss 5:35PM (9/14/2007)
Driver's and Passenger's side a-piller crumpled zones ----standard.
I'm better off in a rear collison in a 1972 ford pinto.
Jay 2:05PM (9/14/2007)
The new BS6 faired better than the old. However, there's no sunroof on the new car and the roof structure right above the driver's side a-piller still crumpled. I wonder what would happen if the car had a sunroof.
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500 2:12PM (9/14/2007)
Hmmm, we don't know if any changes were made other than the deletion of the sunroof? Wonder if Brilliance found that Spanish officials were easier to bribe, perhaps to run the test a little slower...?
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Seminole 2:12PM (9/14/2007)
There is still deformation in the roof, exactly in the area where the sunroof would be. I bet if they tested one with a sunroof, it would buckle and pop the sunroof out just like in the original test. Brilliance didn't do jack to make the car safer.
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seoultrain 2:15PM (9/14/2007)
not so sure that the sunroof is an issue. Looking at the first test, the sunroof isn't a buckling point, but rather it's the A- and B- pillars that fold like paper. Of course, I could be wrong, and the hole in the roof probably contributed at least a little bit.
I still find it hard to believe they redesigned the crash structure of this car so fast. I wanna say that it was the same car, just in a slower collision.
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seoultrain 2:19PM (9/14/2007)
lol, okay. I just looked at the 1st test again. I originally only saw the top view, which doesn't show much, but the sunroof definitely contributed when looking at the side view.
N 2:20PM (9/14/2007)
I smell a rat!
But remember that many of the european brands have been 'bodging' their cars to make it through the NCAP tests for years. Such as Jaguar installing the "automatic safety locking system" which locked all the doors as soon as the vehicle exceeds 5mph. This was hailed as a new system to prevent their customers from getting jacked at the red lights, but the reality was that it was a quick fix to stop their doors popping open during crash tests...
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MiniMe 2:22PM (9/14/2007)
Building a nice crash car is one thing, but then there will be lead paint, plastic body parts instead of steel and all other beautiful things that make Chinese products, well affordable. Road version of Brilliance will be 1/5 of a star, probably, if it doesn't kill all occupants before the crash with toxic materials used to build it.
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Dex 2:24PM (9/14/2007)
Chinese carmakers have basically come out of nowhere, and they're on a VERY steep learning curve. This shows just how far they have to go before being competitive on the world stage.
On the other hand, any established carmaker who isn't preparing for the Chinese' arrival will regret it. As Andy Grove was fond of saying: Only the paranoid survive.
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John R 2:24PM (9/14/2007)
This may be dumb question, but I have to ask. This is out of five, right?
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Barney 10:34PM (9/14/2007)
Yes.
Tim 2:34PM (9/14/2007)
If they really wanted to make this re-test credible, they would have let ADAC do it again.
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