Five Stars From 2019 Isn't Five Stars Today: What the ANCAP Reset Means for Your Next Vehicle

Most fleet purchasing policies in Australia contain a line that reads something like "all new vehicles must hold a five-star ANCAP safety rating", ANCAP being the Australasian New Car Assessment Program. It sounds airtight. In 2026 it isn't, because five stars is no longer a fixed standard. It is a moving one, and the date beside the stars now matters as much as the stars themselves.

What changed on 1 January

Two things happened at the start of this year. First, ANCAP retired the 2023–2025 test criteria and switched to a new 2026–2028 protocol. Second, more than 30 models still on sale lost their ratings for vehicles built from 1 January 2026, because their five-star results dated from 2019 and ANCAP's rating validity period had run out. The list included volume sellers such as the Mazda 3, Mazda CX-30, Kia Seltos and the outgoing Toyota RAV4, as well as a run of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz models.

Those cars did not become less safe overnight. ANCAP is clear that a rating stays valid for the life of the individual vehicle. What expired was the manufacturer's right to advertise that result on newly built stock. A 2019 five-star car built in December 2025 carries the rating; the same car built in January 2026 is, in ANCAP's language, unrated.

Why the datestamp is the real number

ANCAP tightens its criteria every three years, and its own guidance is to choose a vehicle with the highest rating available and a datestamp of no more than six years old. That six-year figure is doing a lot of work. A five-star result from 2018 was earned before ANCAP tested for motorcycle-detecting emergency braking, child presence detection, direct driver monitoring or far-side impacts. A 2026 result requires all of that and more.

The practical consequence: two vehicles can sit side by side on a forecourt, both wearing five stars, and one has met a test regime that the other would very likely fail. The only way to tell them apart is the "TESTED" year printed next to the stars.

What the 2026 protocol actually tests

The new protocol scores every vehicle across four "Stages of Safety": Safe Driving, Crash Avoidance, Crash Protection and Post Crash. Each is scored out of 100, and the overall star rating is capped by the weakest pillar, so a car cannot hide a poor result behind a strong one. For 2026, five stars requires at least 80 per cent in Crash Protection and Post Crash, 70 per cent in Crash Avoidance and 60 per cent in Safe Driving. ANCAP has indicated those floors will step up through 2027 and 2028, so a 2026 datestamp will itself be the softer benchmark within two years.

The tests behind those pillars have changed too. The full-width frontal crash now hits a deformable barrier rather than a rigid wall, with a second dummy in the front passenger seat. The frontal offset test uses a small female dummy in the driver's seat instead of a mid-size male. Emergency braking is assessed at night and in rain, and against pedestrians in varied clothing, including hi-vis. Speed-sign recognition is checked on real Australian and New Zealand roads. There are new assessments for pedal misapplication, for whether driver-monitoring systems detect distraction rather than just alerting for the sake of it, for how intrusive lane-keeping is, and for whether an electric vehicle warns its occupants of a battery fire. A seat or seat-rail failure in a crash test now costs an automatic 50 per cent of the Crash Protection score, which rules out five stars outright.

What it means for a fleet

Fleets buy roughly half of Australia's new vehicles, and ANCAP's chief executive has said fleet demand is the main reason manufacturers keep submitting cars for testing. That influence cuts both ways. A policy that says "five stars" without a year is satisfied by a 2019-tested vehicle, and it will keep being satisfied until the rating expires, which for many models is the same day the replacement arrives at the dealer.

Three small changes fix most of it. Write the datestamp into the policy, not just the stars: "five stars, tested 2023 or later" is a defensible duty-of-care position today and can be moved forward as the fleet turns over. Record the rating and its tested year against each vehicle in the fleet register, alongside the service and registration dates you already keep, so replacement planning can see which vehicles are ageing out of a current standard. If you manage the fleet in an app like Odomly, the vehicle record is the natural place for it; the point is that it lives with the vehicle, not in someone's memory. And check the build date on stock deliveries. The rating expiry applies to build date, not sale date, so a run-out deal on a January-built vehicle may be unrated even though the identical car on the showroom floor beside it still shows five stars.

And for an individual buyer

The same logic applies at the smaller scale. If you are choosing between two five-star cars, look at the year. If you are buying a run-out model at a discount, ask when it was built and whether the rating still applies to that build. The safest car for the money is very often the one with the newest datestamp, not the newest badge.

This article is general information, not safety or legal advice. Rating criteria are current as at September 2026 — check ancap.com.au for the latest ratings and datestamps.