The Jiangling Landwind SUV scored zero stars from the ADAC, the
German auto club, in a front end collision test last week. The ADAC made it clear that this is the worst test score in
their twenty year history. The Isuzu Rodeo-like Landwind has been on sale in Germany, Holland, and Belgium and is set
to go on sale in Great Britain soon. The Chinese-made SUV competes against other SUVs from Kia and Hyundai. There are
several nice galleries of the test available. Bootnetworks.com has this gallery, which is includes other crash test
pictures for comparison. GMX.net also has a
gallery.
We hate to sound like we?re defending this vehicle that performed so poorly, but we?ve received some eye witness
accounts of the test itself and the behavior of the test administrators. The general feeling was the engineers who were
on hand were very unprofessional about this particular test, and reportedly tore off the driver?s door and the arm of
the crash test dummy in disgust. Several journalists were invited to the witness the test, one of which provided this
description to us. You can choose to believe it or not, but we smell a hint of anti-Chinese propaganda. This is a body
on frame SUV, and most likely a direct copy of an older design. If you look at the Bootnetworks.com gallery that we
linked to above, you will see that a previous generation Ford F-150 did not fair much better, neither did the Isuzu
Rodeo. Such a vehicle would make a great example to illustrate any blanket safety issues with vehicles from a competing
automotive industry. There probably isn?t an anti-Chinese auto campaign in Europe or Germany, but the whole affair
seems a little fishy. When the ADAC says this is the worst performing car in twenty years, you have to think about
whether they were more forgiving to some vehicles over that twenty year period. Regardless, we would not put our
families in this vehicle.