You need to look beyond the overall result - visit the NCAP website and look at the detailed score - many cars lose a star because they're less friendly to pedestrians, so nothing to do with protecting occupants - others lose a star for some feature not standard which wasn't generally standard at that price point anyway.

Didn't NCAP also change how they rated cars (made the tests more stringent), i.e. a 3 star rating then would, say, only merit a 1 or 2 today? If not, surely by now (given year-on-year safety improvements) a car would've got 100% across the board?

PS - do you really need an off-roader/4x4 or just an MPV - there were far better cars for both purposes back then and won't be particularly expensive to buy or run if that is a major concern. For older vehicle, best to stick to ones with either proven reliability and robustness (not the Pinin it appears) and/or reasonable on that score and simple mechanicals/electrics/few gizmos to go wrong.

The Pinin as I recall was also quite hungry on the old jungle juice and likely to have a high CO2 figure (and therefore expensive to run even if it was reliable). SI would steer clear from complex cars that are expensive to fix unless you're willing to dispose of it once it requires major surgery because you bought it for peanuts.

Edited by Engineer Andy on 12/07/2015 at 14:40