Playing a different tune

Honda Siel Cars India has built up a reputation for building cars that people want. They began with the City, and moved on to the Accord and then the Civic. They’ve set their sights on bigger numbers now, which means they’ve got only one way to go: smaller cars. Enter the Jazz, which Honda hopes will play its part in increasing their share in the Indian market. Honda invited us to Goa for a first impression of their newest offering, and here’s our initial impression.
It’s got a mini-MPV shape when looked at side-on. The best view is from the front, where the prominent headlamps and grille leave you in no doubt as to what you’re looking at. The rear isn’t our favourite view, but looks good enough. The real story is on the inside, though. The dashboard is like a mini Accord’s, and the air-con controls are chunky dials that will make life really easy for the driver. The steering wheel will be familiar to most Honda owners and fans, and has buttons to control the music system on it. The dials use orange on orange, like the City does, but with the addition of a digital readout that shows useful information like a distance-to-empty readout as well as a realtime fuel consumption indicator that encourages the driver to drive as economically as possible. It’s as practical as we’ve come to expect from a Honda, and it exceeds expectations in some areas with a dual glovebox, an enormous boot (for a hatchback, that is) and no less than ten cup holders! The rear seats are versatile and split and fold in a number of ways, making it one of the most practical cars on our roads today.
The Jazz has a reworked version of the 1.2-litre engine that does duty under the hood of the European Jazz. It incorporates a bundle of technology like the i-VTEC system and it also deactivates one of the two inlet valves at low revs to boost low-end torque. It generates 90bhp and gets the job done, but for a car this size, we wish there was a slightly bigger engine given that the car has the capacity to haul a lot of things with the versatility offered by the ‘magic seats’. It typically has absolutely no vibrations or harshness, but has a very un-Honda like sporty sound at relatively low revs, as low as 3000rpm. Honda hasn’t skimped on safety, again leading from the front in this aspect by equipping the Jazz’s brakes with ABS with EBD and installing airbags as standard across the range.
The Jazz is a large hatch by our standards, and competes in spirit with cars like the Ford Fusion, but will compete with the likes of the Fabia on pricing with a base model price of Rs 7 lakh, ex-showroom, Delhi. It will follow in the City’s footsteps in offering certain accessories like alloy wheels at the dealer level for a little addition on that price. Will the Jazz be the latest in a long line of success stories for Honda? Time will tell.