Ford’s fastest car – the Mustang Mach-E GT – misses out on five-star safety rating

The fastest car in the Ford Australia catalogue is without a five-star safety rating – despite its impressive performance credentials – because the Mustang Mach-E GT electric vehicle is missing one key piece of safety technology.

Although the most powerful and most expensive version of the new Ford Mustang Mach-E comes with almost all the same advanced safety aids as other models in the Mach-E line-up – which are awarded a five-star safety rating – the flagship GT misses out on a centre airbag between the front seats.

This means the occupant protection scores – in particular in a side impact – do not apply to the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT variant and therefore it misses out on the same five-star safety rating.

The Kia EV6 GT electric car – the fastest and most powerful model in the Kia line-up locally – also misses out on a five-star safety rating for the same reason.

Both of these high-performance electric cars – the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT and Kia EV6 GT – have sports seats with large side bolsters, but they have not been equipped with a centre airbag which is designed to prevent head clash between front-seat occupants in a severe side-on crash.

The safety anomaly comes despite the fact both the Ford and Kia high-performance electric cars are among the quickest-accelerating vehicles on Australian roads.

The Ford Mustang Mach-E GT is even faster than the V8-powered coupe which shares the Ford Mustang name.

Independent testing has shown they are capable of sprinting from zero to 100km/h in about four seconds, which is as fast as a Porsche 911 Carrera sports car – but at half the price.

Both vehicles cost in excess of $100,000 but a Porsche 9 with this much straight-line performance costs in excess of $250,000.

Representatives for Ford and Kia say for now there are no plans to upgrade the vehicles with a centre airbag or to submit them to a new round of crash tests to see how they perform.

Both cars meet or exceed Australian Design Rule (ADR) safety standards however the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) has become the default benchmark for motor vehicle safety because the independent body publishes detailed data on how each car performs in a series of severe crashes.

However the lack of a five-star safety rating for the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT and Kia EV6 GT rules them out for government fleets – such as specialist highway patrol vehicles – which have minimum five-star safety standards.