when you sit in a small car you sit a lot closer to the outer side of the vehicle, and the panels are much much thinner.

its like packing a coffee mug in a box with scrunched newspaper in it versus one with out scrunched newspaper in it,
and dropping them both.
with out the news paper, there is nothing to absorb any of the impact and the force will go straight on to the mug/passenger

small cars have their place, sure,
but dont for one minute try and tell me it is an uncompromised substitute for a large car

Now at GM HO in the US Mike has alot of influence as well as the final say as to how both current and future GM products throughout the world will look..

On a recent visit to Oz with other GM CEOs including Bob Lutz; whilst he cooled down any speculation as to a next gen monaro Mike did like the idea of a compact hatch/coupe [of which there are a couple of CGIs around the place]possibly the same size as the soon to be released Torana…. A9-X anyone?

Holden took the lead design on VE in Australia, Daewoo designed CaptivA in Korea – both are 100% GM.

GM head office dictated the VE’s key dimensions (so that it would meet their global requirements) does that mean that the VE Commodore was designed in America?

I also nted that you compared The barina with a car within the same class which proves that you aren’t a Toyota fan

Crumple zones and airbags are all about dissipating energy.

Smaller cars have less mass and therefore less energy to dissipate in a crash. They therefore need lighter crumple zone elements to dissipate that energy.

Larger cars, with more mass must have larger, stronger crumple zone elements.

Unfortunately for the ocupants of smaller cars, what that means is the energy is dissapated from the large car into the small car before it’s own crumple zones begin to work.

Effectively then, a 4 star large car will usually win out in an argument with a 5 star small car. Trees however usually win all arguments.

Same deal with Ford and Jaguar during their master/ slave arrangement.

has anyone really compared the barina fairly within its class for quality???
everything in this class for around the same money is just as bad.
if the barina had better safety credentials, it would easily be a better car than the Getz.
compare a few in their class guys and you will be surprised like i was.

Carl,
dont you own a Yaris??
dont you too complain about the fuel economy??
dont you say its actually like 7.5L/100k which would but it no better than the barina economy.

small cars arent really as good for economy as majority think (apart from the diesels)

you are silly to think that you are just as safe in a 5 star micro as you would be in a 5 star large car (family class)

sure its about the crumple happening the right way, but if you have 1/2 the space for the crumple thingy to happen, somethings gotta give.

Captiva IS Designed and Built by Daewoo in Korea.

OK so a couple of Aussies helped out with the styling (referd to as “designed” in the article that you linked to), but you would note that even that was done within the Daewoo offices.

OK so it was “tested by Australian engineers”. How does that change it’s origins?

Sorry, but I’m in engineering and when we talk “design” we don’t mean “style” we mean “engineering design”.

To suggest that Captiva is a Holden design is just plain ludicrous. Please stop regurgitating carefully selected advertising propaganda, and trying to pass it off as some kind of truth.

Now I’m not saying wether it’s a good or bad thing (you may be aluding to something there) but:

Captiva IS Designed, Engineered and Built by Daewoo in Korea.