Trivia dump: Kia's tryst with NCAPs

Early days

Infamously, Kias in India have had GNCAP test performance ranging from somewhat troublesome to quite problematic.

Indian Kias have suffered from severe, consistently bad rearward intrusion of the pedals, which has cost the cars quite a few points in GNCAP tests.

Severe pedal intrusion (not the bodyshell instability) was the biggest reason older Indian Kias lost so many points.

Few people seem to know that while instability of the structure is just a 1-point penalty, pedal intrusion forms the entire 4-point score for the feet. Of course, that gets drowned out because unstable bodyshell has become the default internet buzzword (buzzphrase?) for people who like to think the star rating alone is too plebeian.

The truth is, the Kia Seltos and Carens would have remained 3-star cars even if their bodyshells had stayed stable, simply because pedal movement is hugely penalised in comparison. To illustrate this, I invoke two obsolete Hondas:

Comparing the 3-star Honda Mobilio to the 4-star City (4th-gen) perfectly demonstrates how high pedal intrusion is hugely penalised by GNCAP compared to bodyshell instability (4 points vs 1 point). Image: Global NCAP

New beginnings (for Hyundai)

Yes, the Verna's passenger compartment became unstable, but yes, it is their first 5-star car. Was this just a Creta/Carens with airbags slapped on to make it 5-star? No. Did GNCAP award it points for ADAS to offset bad crash protection? Also no.

It's not just 6 airbags: the Verna had extremely low pedal intrusion compared to other cars from Hyundai-Kia, which contributed hugely to it achieving five stars. Image: Global NCAP

What people seem to have straight-up missed is that with zero pedal intrusion in the frontal impact, the Verna has actually fixed *the* big structural problem its stablemates had presented. Side airbags or not, with the old frontal-only protocol, the Verna would have been in line for a comfortable 4 stars (the new protocols give equal weightage to front and side impact, which did lift it to five).

The Syros

The Syros appears to have one-upped even that. With a very robust BNCAP result, it enters the territory of not just five stars but "as good as it gets" which has traditionally belonged to Tata, Mahindra and to an extent* VW-Skoda.

*Kushaq and Slavia had a little bit of pedal intrusion as well

As for child protection, it was clear since its launch that Kia were going for a comfortable result: the new passenger airbag deactivation switch (worth 3 points) and i-Size positions (worth 1 point) more than gave that away. After all, the Carens scraped its way to five stars even without the former.

But it's the adult protection that's a pleasant surprise.

Syros result steps into the "as good as it gets" zone. Image: BNCAP

From the green feet we can infer that there was zero pedal intrusion, and its footwell remained stable too. And it appears very likely that its passenger compartment remained stable as well — otherwise, Kia would not have been allowed to demonstrate robust knee protection for drivers of different sizes, without which it is extremely rare to have green knees.

Interestingly, the Syros is also the first car tested by BNCAP that has been tested for side & pole impacts on the passenger side that's not covered by Indian/EU homologation. This is something Global NCAP have always done, ever since they caught Ford and GM red-handed in Latin America in 2017.

Syros is the first car tested by BNCAP for side impact on passenger side that's not already covered in regulatory side impact testing (ECE 95/AIS 99). Image: BNCAP

Now you know there's more to it than the widely parrotted stable bodyshell.