After a lengthy search, they have just appointed a fully qualified volleyball referee. I know that sounds like a joke - the pope and a volleyball referee crash into a bar, AND… - but unfortunately, it’s not.  

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ANCAP - the Shitsvillian and Sheepshaggistani New Car Assessment Program - appears to me increasingly to be doing you, out there in Consumerville, a disservice. These are the dudes who persevere with publicising (for example) Volkswagen’s alleged five-star safety rating with Amarok.  I just went to the ANCAP website this morning and checked. Searched ‘Volkswagen Amarok - current models only’. The result: five stars. This vehicle has not been tested for nine long years. Nine. ‘Current models only’ - please. Amarok, of course, lacks airbags for row 2 occupants, among other critical safety omissions. So it would be kinda lucky to get three stars if tested today.   Basically, you might survive getting gently T-boned in your allegedly five-star Amarok, but things aren’t so certain for the kids in the back… Would it not be a great pity if a tragedy such as that occurred after you had concluded that your Argentinain Volkswagen shitheap was ‘safe enough for the fam’ after cursory interrogation of the ANCAP website, as part of your pre-purchasing research? I think that would be a real shame, not to mention a gross consumer disservice.  In 2016, four years before now, and five years after ANCAP awarded Amarok five stars, the Volkswagen Death Star launched the popular V6 Amarok. At the launch, James Ward from CarAdvice asked Dr Jan Michel - who is some wonky Volkswegian international sales dude - about the still absent Amarok row two airbags:  “We are working on it.” - Dr Jan Michel, Invernational Sales Director, VW Commercial  They’re still working on it, four years later, apparently. Because: Still absent. So, well done there, on the management of a five-star safety rating, and the community dissemination thereof.  ANCAP will retort, of course, look at the date, dude, but to understand that, a consumer would then need to understand the temporal and physical context of the evolution of the safety ratings system. And, look at the typical YouTube comments feed: Many consumers are incapable of that.   This is ANCAP’s inherent dysfunctionality, in my view. The burden of understanding not all five-star ratings are equivalent should not be imposed upon ordinary people. Because not all of them can handle the truth.  Old five-star ratings are meaningless, basically. ANCAP, or course, lacks the budget and other resources to maintain a current ratings system, and today’s hodge-podge of retrospectively irrelevant ratings is systematically vulnerable to consumer misinterpretation (personal opinion).  ANCAP is also somewhat responsible for your next new car being so profoundly annoying. All those safety systems, warning you about all those nonexistent threats, incessantly. That’s a direct consequence of carmakers humping ANCAP’s leg like the dog that’s just gotten into the Viagra, so they can get five stars (not the dog - he doesn’t want five stars - the carmaker - pro tip).