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2007 Buick LaCrosse earns ONE-star from NHTSA


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LaCrosse tweaked after rare one-star rating
Harry Stoffer | Link to Original Article @ Automotive News | February 13, 2007 - 3:01 pm

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WASHINGTON - General Motors has altered the trim on the inside of the driver's door of the 2007 Buick LaCrosse because the car earned the lowest possible score in a government side-impact crash test.

"We were surprised and disappointed" with the one-star rating, GM spokesman Alan Adler said.

GM made the midmodel-year change in the door trim of cars on the assembly line last month, Adler said. The company will ask that the car be retested, he said.

But for the moment, the one-star rating remains in the information made available to consumers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

A one-star rating on the five-star scale does stand out. The car still complies with safety standards, but a lower rating is supposed to indicate a greater possibility of serious injury in a crash.

Many vehicles now get four or five stars in most testing categories. The government is asking for recommendations on how to improve the program so that it better differentiates between the best performers and the less-than-best.

Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced plans to overhaul the program during a visit to the Detroit auto show last month. The testing, called the New Car Assessment Program, began in 1978.

The LaCrosse got five stars for protecting driver and passenger dummies in frontal impacts. It got three stars for the rear passenger in a side-impact crash and four stars for resisting rollovers.

Results for 63 newly rated vehicles are at www.nhtsa.gov.

Ratings for vehicles back to 1990 are at www.safercar.gov.
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Something seems fishy with this. A one-star rating with side curtain airbags? For those not familiar, the LaCrosse earned a three-star rating withOUT side curtain airbags back in 2005. Also keep in mind the 2007 Impala with SAB earns 5-stars and the 2007 Grand Prix without them still earns 3-stars.

Here are links to the two tests at NHTSA...
2005 LaCrosse test
2007 LaCrosse test
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Perhaps the curtain air bags produce the opposite result from what was intended?

New faux wood on the door? What makes it worse than the previous stuff?

I was being facetious.

But how about a smart-ass answer: The new faux wood is more realistic than the previous stuff, so it splinters like real wood when damaged. Therefore, it gets thrust into the side of the dummy causing gashes in major organs.

:P

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Gord,

Is this the 'door trim' issue that caused the poor results?

Thanks for your insight! I assume you may work at Oshawa?

As far as i have heard there was apart added inside the door that caused the problem . Im not sure if this part had changed the routing of the wires which caused the pinch condition in an accident
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As far as i have heard there was apart added inside the door that caused the problem . Im not sure if this part had changed the routing of the wires which caused the pinch condition in an accident

Glad to hear from someone who has some true insight into the problem. Much better to hear where the problem is than just more media dumping on GM.

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Glad to hear from someone who has some true insight into the problem. Much better to hear where the problem is than just more media dumping on GM.

I'm glad the problem has an easy fix....but you've got to wonder how it got that far....the media is not entirely wrong for pointing at this as an example of the 'bad old days'. At its core, its an inexcusable F-up.
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don't they do their own crash tests? shouldn't they have known about this?

this is a condition that is not expected to occur every time, that's probably why GM's own crash testing didn't find it. Of course GM crash tests their own vehicles, you would be nauseus watching all that perfectly good metal getting crunched.
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