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

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

That's what they get for not using squishy enough interior trim parts.

No, it's the new faux wood on the door.

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?

Edited February 14, 200719 yr by aaaantoine

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.

Hm, I 1 star rating, does that mean its brother and sister cars also get such rating, or is it just the Buick?

The problem is with a sensor wire being cut in the front doors in side impact crashes before the signal released the air bags.The wire hrness is being rerouted to prevent this

Gord,

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

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

don't they do their own crash tests? shouldn't they have known about this?

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

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.

GM's gonna have to issue a recall for this.

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.

GM's gonna have to issue a recall for this.

Fortunately for GM, the LaCrosse doesn't sell well, so the numbers should be low.

wow...so without SAB's it gets a one?

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.

Not to mention the prototype cars and the defective cars that are crushed.

Chris

It's an old dated platform that wasn't engineered for today's crash tests...not surprising it did so poorly..

It's an old dated platform that wasn't engineered for today's crash tests...not surprising it did so poorly..

It doesn't have anything to do with the platform or structure... it's a wiring defect instead. The Impala did quite well.

It doesn't have anything to do with the platform or structure... it's a wiring defect instead. The Impala did quite well.

What does a 'wiring defect' have to do with side impact crashes?

What does a 'wiring defect' have to do with side impact crashes?

Faulty side airbag deployment. The '05 LaCrosse without side airbags got three stars; the '07 with standard side airbags got one star.

^ I would say that adding the air bag that does not deploy could have a negative result because it does change the trim design.