Dear 001,
According to my sources in Germany, backed up by British magazine "Autocar", the latest BMW 5-series has not done well in the European NCAP crash tests. Rather than give the car a safety rating of 3 (no better than a wet cardboard box) the engineers pulled the "5" from the testing station citing "technical problems" and arranging to return another day. The real problem is that some people believe there are allegedly intrinsic design faults in the chassis of that car, and merely adding high tensile steel, magnesium or carbon fibre bits will not fix the problem.
The Munich Eunuch
Have any readers heard of this potential problem or have any more insight?
001
p.s. Other readers are now confirming the AutoCar story