KEY POINTS:
Car buyers are being urged to demand better bumpers to avoid increases to insurance premiums.
State Insurance, the country's largest vehicle insurer, launched a campaign in Auckland yesterday to put pressure on manufacturers to design bumpers to protect vehicles from major repair costs caused by relatively minor impacts.
It follows crash tests of nine of New Zealand's top-selling small vehicles at simulated speeds of just 10km/h.
The tests revealed damage estimated by State at between $3200 and $13,200 - costing 10 per cent to 64 per cent of the prices of new cars put to the bash at State parent company IAG's Australian research centre.
"A lot of people would be surprised to hear that a 10km/h slip-up at the traffic lights could do $13,000 worth of damage to their car and in some cases be worth nearly two-thirds of the value," said IAG research head Robert McDonald.
"What we would like to do is have car manufacturers make bumpers that actually bump - that do what they are designed to do - and absorb energy in low-speed collisions."
Even the least scathed vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, suffered an estimated $1210 in frontal damage and $1971 from being hit from behind.
Most battle-scarred was a Honda Civic, with an estimated $13,202 repair bill. That included $9627 to the front and $3575 to the rear.
It was surpassed for frontal damage by a Subaru Impreza, with a $10,109 bill from that end alone, despite being hailed by its supplier as "the safest car in New Zealand" for the protection both of its occupants and pedestrians.
Another $1805 was added to the Impreza's bill at its rear.
But the vehicle with the highest damage bill in proportion to its purchase price was the Suzuki Swift, which State estimated would cost $10,939 of a price tag of $16,990 to repair.
Mr McDonald said that was getting close to State's write-off threshold of about 75 per cent of a vehicle's replacement cost.
He said that once such a car was more than a year or so old, its depreciation rate would "certainly" mean a total-loss write-off.
And he warned that because most collision claims involved impacts of less than 15km/h, insurers around the world were starting to build the effectiveness of bumper designs into insurance premiums.
State's national sales manager Mike Tully said his company was likely to follow that lead, using a pricing system that allowed it to weigh up the risk of insuring particular models.
Mr McDonald said it was important for carmakers to design bumpers to be stable and at the right height to absorb energy from nose-to-tail crashes.
Some were too low and thin, meaning they tended to "shovel" other vehicles into the high-cost components under car bonnets.
Suzuki chief executive Bill Grice said modern cars were designed to "crumple continuously" to save their occupants, unlike old models relying on large metal bumpers alone.
"If they didn't stop the other car, there was no crumple zone to protect the passengers," he said.
"If you want big fat solid bumpers to save damage to your car, you are not going to do a lot of good to pedestrians - everything's a compromise and you've got to look at the total picture."
Mr Grice challenged State's damage assessment, saying a detailed estimate his company obtained yesterday from panelbeaters came to about $8500.
He said it was unfair for State to compare the damage against the Swift's relatively low purchase price.
"Is the customer going to spend another $10,000 just to save a few bob on the [insurance] premium?" he said.
"The Swift is often in the top three sellers each month so customers love it, I don't think they are going to change their habits because of this."
Despite Subaru's top rating from Australian and European crash tests for occupant and pedestrian safety, Mr McDonald said the Toyota Corolla was also rated highly without compromising the effectiveness of its bumpers.
"It doesn't have to be either safety or repair costs - the two aren't mutually exclusive."
