When we bought our Kia in August 2010 the salesman told us Kia had just won the Monte Carlo Rally.

Being ever the sceptic I did some investigation, sounded a bit daft since it was August when we were in the showroom and the Monte takes place in January. Turned out that Kia had competed sucessfully in the Andros Trophy (ice racing) in the mid 2000's, they had won the title beating Alan Prost in his Toyota. But as is normal in motorsport the only "real" Kia part on the cars was probably the badge.

When I pointed this out to the saleman all he could manage was an off the cuff "well its the same thing".

Lying bar stewards one and all.

I read some time ago that Volvo did not intend to have any new models NCAP tested in the future. They claim their cars are built well beyond the 5* standards and since this is not reflected in the results there is little point.

Isn't this a bit of a non story as the A5 is a coupe version of tha A4 and the A7 the same of an A6, both of which have been tested.

Had the coupe/cabrio just been called an A4 as it previously was, would there be a story? Was the old A4 Cabrio tested?

As far as I know, NCAP are still not including rear visibility in their testing - a glaring omission. Some manufacturers let the stylist have his way and allow either a huge blind spot (Honda Civic) or a ridiculous narrowing of the glass area towards the back of the car (Volvo V40 and V60, Ford Fiesta, and Nissan Qashqai, where the new model is even worse than the old one).

Audi are pretty good in this respect, as are VW and Skoda, although SEAT are not so good.

This can be positively dangerous in situations such as reversing or joining a road from an oblique angle. I'd say this is a much more important issue than worrying because some Audis have been tested and some haven't. Is it really likely that they would go to the expense of designing several cars on the same basic platform so differently that the NCAP rating would vary between them?

I do agree that the dealers shouldn't misrepresent the position - no doubt this has happened because Audi hasn't briefed them properly.

Oh dear - I have to disagree with Avant!

The Honda Civic- 8th generation-2006 on does not have a huge blind spot and does not cause problems with rear vision when reversing.

I've got one, had it since 2007, used to teach driving in it until I escaped from the UK in 2009. The last 19 pupils I taught all passed their driving tests in it first time, one of them with no driving faults at all.

Huge blind spot indeed!

Edited by coopshere on 16/05/2014 at 14:42

Just one * for all round visibility in the Civic 'Van'.

www.which.co.uk/cars/choosing-a-car/how-we-test-ca.../

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