Your R200 000 car could be missing a safety feature that costs under R1 000
Some entry-level cars leave out side and curtain airbags, even though they cost manufacturers far less than you might think. Wendy Knowler explains what to ask before you buy, plus more Consumer Hacks.
Car makers leave side and curtain airbags out of their base models here because legally they don't have to, not because the airbags cost a fortune.
Global NCAP's Alejandro Furas gave me the numbers. A frontal airbag costs a manufacturer roughly 50 US dollars. A side or curtain airbag costs 30 to 40 euros. That's under R1000 a side, on a car selling for more than R200 000.
And side impacts are the ones most likely to kill you. There's about 25cm between the outside of the door and your ribs, and your head has only a pane of glass.
So, ask for them, and keep asking.
Two minutes before you buy a car
Before you buy any new car, go to globalncap.org and check whether that South African model has been crash tested and what it scored. It's free and it takes two minutes.
South Africa has no crash test programme of its own. Since 2017 the Automobile Association and Global NCAP have been buying our cars off dealership floors and shipping them to Germany to be crashed, and close to 30 South African models have been through it.
Then look at the spec sheet for curtain airbags and electronic stability control. If the entry model doesn't have them, ask what the next model up costs. The gap is usually smaller than you think.
Which Starlet are you driving?
Toyota quietly replaced the Starlet in September 2025 with a version carrying four extra airbags: side and curtain ones. More than 20 000 of the older two-airbag cars had already been sold here, and a Global NCAP crash test saw it being awarded a shocking zero safety stars. The six-airbag model currently on sale was later crash tested and awarded four stars in early September.
The two look the same in the street. So if you own one, or you are about to buy a used one, open the driver's door and look at the inside of the B-pillar, above the front seatbelt holder. The newer ones have "SRS seatbelt" embossed there. The older ones don't.
The visa nobody warns you about
A South African couple was refused check-in at Auckland airport a few months ago for their flight home. The reason: their layover in Perth on the return leg was longer than eight hours, so Australia's transit-without-visa concession for South African passport holders no longer applied.
They'd transited Perth on the way over with no visa at all, because their stop was shorter.
Getting home cost them R22 862 in replacement tickets. The transit visa they needed is free.
Check the visa rules for every stop on your itinerary, in both directions, and check the length of each layover. The rules can differ leg by leg.
That airline credit is on a clock
When an airline refunds you into a wallet or a voucher instead of your bank account, that money usually has an expiry date. With Lift it's 12 months.
A Cape Town man lost R3 090 that way in July. What stung was that the airline emailed him a statement showing that that R3090 available on 14 July. The funds had actually expired in June, and the airline later said that email was sent in error.
They did reinstate his money in the end, but only after I got involved.
The day a credit lands in your wallet, work out the expiry date and put it in your diary.
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