China's domestically made cars are making progress in terms of safety, with the Chery A3 and SAIC Roewe 550 getting five-star rankings in crash tests, said the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC) here on Wednesday.

Only one star below the top rank, it is the best result ever achieved by domestic-made vehicles. The Hongqi car got such a ranking earlier this year, said the CATARC director Zhao Hang.

The Mercedes-Benz C200 from Beijing Benz-DaimlerChrysler Automotive Co. and Faw-Volkswagen's New Bora also got five stars in the fourth batch of crash tests of seven models.

The center tested 28 models in 2008, bringing the total number of tested domestic models to 65, which came from 90 percent of the domestic auto manufacturers, CATARC official Wu Wei said.

Testing started in 2006.

The proportion of five-star cars rose from 8.3 percent in 2006 to 36 percent in 2007 and 46 percent in 2008, Wu said.

More than 30 percent of all tested models got only two- or three-star results, said Wu.

(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2008)