Not voting, as I don't have an opinion on any of those cars. However one thing I recommend is that you check out the safety scores for any car you are interested in. The EURO NCAP tests rate the safety of a large number of cars (results for superminis are found here - http://www.euroncap.com/content/safety_ratings/ratings.php?id1=1 ).
I never paid much attention to safety ratings before, thinking that all new cars must be pretty safe. But then I saw an episode of Top Gear where they showed what cars of different ratings looked like after a crash. It was a real eye-opener. A 4 star car when crashed preserved the passenger cabin space. A 3 star car had some denting to the cabin space, and you'd get some injury. A 2 star car had the cabin space completely mashed. It made a real real difference.
When I was car hunting, I narrowed my selection down to 4 and 5 star cars only.
In the main, these cars are 4-star; I have been looking out for the NCAP ratings, but I hadn't thought to look at all the NCAP ratings to see what else was out there, so ta for the link! I'm going to take a look at those 5-star ones (except for the Punto, because (a) it's a Fiat, and (b) it's significantly larger than any car I'd call a Supermini!)
On the other hand, if they'd been doing these tests back when my car was made, then I doubt it would've scored even as high as two stars, so the only way is up, really... I suppose I have quite a blase attitude to safety; it probably stems from only doing about 4,000 around-town miles a year, which I imagine does a lot more for your safety than choosing a four-star car over a three-star car.
...in fact, I just saw that the Seicento, which replaced my current car in Fiat's line-up, is the lowest-scoring car in that list, coming in at one-and-one-struck-out stars. So I'd guess mine would have trouble getting one star...
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-18 05:15 am (UTC)I never paid much attention to safety ratings before, thinking that all new cars must be pretty safe. But then I saw an episode of Top Gear where they showed what cars of different ratings looked like after a crash. It was a real eye-opener. A 4 star car when crashed preserved the passenger cabin space. A 3 star car had some denting to the cabin space, and you'd get some injury. A 2 star car had the cabin space completely mashed. It made a real real difference.
When I was car hunting, I narrowed my selection down to 4 and 5 star cars only.
Hugs,
R.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-18 05:54 am (UTC)On the other hand, if they'd been doing these tests back when my car was made, then I doubt it would've scored even as high as two stars, so the only way is up, really... I suppose I have quite a blase attitude to safety; it probably stems from only doing about 4,000 around-town miles a year, which I imagine does a lot more for your safety than choosing a four-star car over a three-star car.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-18 06:00 am (UTC)