The 94 people in the Republic who purchased a Chrysler Voyager this year may have been a little nervous putting their foot to the floor this week.

The lumbering Voyager, one of the first "people carriers" to come on the market in the United States and renowned for its spacious comforts, had its safety performance described as "appalling" by the organisers of a new European crash test.

The vehicle, championed by the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, among others, retails in the Republic for up to £30,000 and, before the new test results, was the third biggest selling multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) in the Republic. Some 300 of them were sold here last year, mainly to people with large families.

Like other MPVs, the vehicles are basically converted vans, with the larger ones offering seven removable seats. Sometimes described as "big boxes on wheels", they were introduced to Ireland several years ago after becoming the ultimate symbol of middle-class, middle-aged, suburban American family life. However, their commodious structures, which leave as much space as possible for passengers and luggage, may be their weakness.

The message from the European New Car Assessment Programme (ENCAP) was clear: the Voyager and many other MPVs offer less protection than conventional cars.

While this conclusion was alarming enough for MPV owners (including a large number of Irish taxi drivers), the test results themselves were more worrying.

The survey did not speculate about possible injuries to passengers, but a 40 m.p.h front-impact test showed the Voyager's steering column being forced up hard into the head, neck and chest of the crash dummies inside. The car's footwell was split open, offering little protection for legs and feet.

Accepting that it was only a simulated accident, the evidence was still shocking and the zero points awarded to the vehicle by the test organisers compounded the alarming picture.

The Opel Sintra, retailing in Irish garages for about £26,000, was made to look almost as fragile when subjected to the same test. The impact sheared the steering wheel off its column, violently knocking the driver's head back and upwards - creating a significant risk of fatal injury. The test also said the protection given to the driver's chest by the Sintra's exterior was "poor".

While the MPVs performed better during 30 m.p.h side-on collisions (with the Voyager last again), the ENCAP team pointed out the test assumed the vehicles were struck by cars of standard height. The damage could have been a lot worse had the accident involved another MPV or any other taller model.

The chairman of ENCAP, Mr Max Mosley, said "these results will surprise thousands of people who own these vehicles or are thinking of buying one".

The results come at a time when people in the motor trade were predicting a great leap forward for sales of MPVs here. In the year to April, over 800 MPVs were sold, and while the figure was small, some dealers hoped the MPV would become as common on Irish roads as they have in America.

Mr Anthony Neville, marketing manager of OHM, the distributors of Chrysler vehicles in the Republic, told The Irish Times that Chrysler's engineers were likely to study the "valuable" information contained in the ENCAP test. He said the company was amazed at the test results, as the Voyager got four stars out of five in a similar test in the United States last year. He added that American and Swedish insurance firms, using statistics from thousands of crashes, showed the Voyager had a low casualty rate.

"One test in the lab does not really paint the whole picture of the vehicle's safety performance," he said. He added that "real driving experience" had shown the Voyager to be a very safe vehicle.

Mr Conor Faughnan, head of AA Roadwatch, said the ENCAP study, sponsored by the British, Swedish and Dutch Governments, had been strongly supported by the AIFTI, the umbrella body for motoring organisations like the AA, and was one of the few independent studies on car safety. "The car manufacturers do their own tests and research, but this is completely independent of them," he said.

HE said the Voyager and the Sintra were "not unsafe vehicles", but it was important for manufacturers to learn from the findings of the ENCAP study.

"I think it would be overstating the case to say they should be withdrawn, but the next models should be improved significantly," he stated.

He said the only documentation needed to sell a car in the EU was a "type approval certificate". These were given out by national car safety agencies in France, Germany, Britain and many other EU states. The Republic has no agency dealing with car safety, despite the "unique" nature of our roads.

Mr Neville said the Republic tended to "piggyback" on the safety tests done by other states. However, it seems astonishing that no agency tests the performance of new cars on the Irish road network. It is equally astonishing that there is no official body to provide independent information on car safety.

Mr Cyril McHugh, the chief executive of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) highlighted the problem of building cars which are like cages.

"If you give a car too much protection then that can have a terrible impact when that car hits something else," he said. He also pointed out that while some of the MPVs performed poorly in the ENCAP study, others, such as the Renault Espace and the Toyota Picnic, were awarded four stars.