Euro NCAP kicks off the start of a new year of car safety testing by recognizing the top performers of last year and the winners of the 2021 Best in Class awards.
Euro NCAP tested 33 new cars in 2021, of which 22 achieved the top 5-star rating. Among the successes, the Mercedes-EQ EQS emerged as best in the “Executive Car” and “Pure Electric” categories, narrowly beating runner-up the Polestar-2. In the “Small Off-Road” category, the winner is the Nissan Qashqai with an outstanding performance in active safety. The award in the “Large-Off Road” category goes to Škoda’s first all-electric SUV, the Enyaq iV. The Toyota Yaris Cross took the top spot in the “Small MPV” category and the Škoda Fabia was the best “Small Family Car”.
The Euro NCAP Best-in-Class award is given to those cars which perform best overall in categories with at least three entrants that year. Winners must have achieved a five-star rating and must have no critical body region coloured red in the full-scale tests. Click here to learn more about the rules.
Michiel van Ratingen says:
“2021 was a tough year for the car industry: a shortage of parts, semiconductors in particular, was the sting in the tail of the Covid crisis, affecting development timelines, production and sales. Still, we saw quite a number of new car models coming to the market, many of them electric or hybrid, and many of them achieving five-star ratings despite the demanding requirements. Well done to the winners as well as to the runners-up, some of which were very close contenders for the top slot in their respective categories.”
Best in Class
| Executive Runner-up |
Mercedes-EQ EQS Polestar 2 |
| Large Off-Road Runner-up |
Škoda ENYAQ iV BMW iX |
| Small Family Car Runner-up |
Škoda Fabia – |
| Small MPV Runner-up |
Toyota Yaris Cross VW Caddy |
| Pure Electric Runner-up |
Mercedes-EQ EQS Polestar 2 |
A video compiling images of all 2021 Best in Class cars is available on YouTube channel. Detailed results and crash test pictures of all rewarded cars are published on EuroNCAP website.
