2020 Honda City First Drive: City Perfect

And to do that it’s changed into the longest and widest sedan in its segment. Yes, the 2020 Honda City is bigger in dimensions. Not only that it has an ASEAN N-CAP 5 Star rating equivalent when it comes to safety.

EXTERIORS

Let’s start with its external features. The car is now 4549mm in length, 1748 mm in width and 1489mm in height. It has a wheel base of 2600mm. The car overall has very sharp design lines. The front grill area reminds you of the Amaze and Civic from the Honda family. 

The headlamp cluster has  DRLs integrated with the solid wing face, full LED headlamps with 9 LED array inline shell, integrated LED DRL and L shaped LED turn signal. These headlamps are follow-me-home / lead-me-to-car headlamps with auto off timer. The fog lamps are projector ones and LED. The side profile of the vehicle is elegant and it does give a longish look to the car. Body coloured door handles come with tiny buttons for the front doors that lock and unlock the car, with the keys in your pocket. These are basically touch sensor based smart keyless access entry.

Each time you lock and unlock, the ORVMs mounted on door skin, fold and unfold respectively. The car sits on 16-inch diamond cut alloy wheels which have a Shark Gray paint two-tone appearance. Must say it is quite sporty to look at.

When you move to the rear, you get to see the Z Shaped 3D wrap-around LED tail lamp with LED side marker lamps

INTERIORS:

Coming to the interiors, they do look plush. The beige and black tone for the interiors gives the car a very uber look and feel from inside. There are no electrically adjusted buttons for your driver seat or the one next to it. Everything is manual here. The seats by themselves are very comfortable and give ample thigh and lumbar support. The side bolstering too is good. The seats are leather ones and have a very nice design about them. The door trims come with soft pads.

The dashboard is of high quality with real stitch soft pad and woody garnish. There is an 8 inches advanced touchscreen display audio, a click-feel AC dial with Red/ Blue Illumination, high quality leather steering wheel & and shift lever and soft interior ambient lighting in front footwell and map lamp with LED interior room lamps. The steering wheel can be adjusted for reach and tilt. The steering wheel has several buttons mounted on it. On the right are the cruise control buttons while on your left are the volume buttons, the buttons to make and receive calls. There is also a segment first feature called the Steering Mounted Commander Scroll Switch.

 Since we were driving the 1.5 litre petrol i-vtec vehicle with cvt, there were paddle shifters too on the steering. On the right side of the steering along with the lever for indicator, there is a lane watch camera button. When it is pressed you can see the view on the left of your vehicle which is basically a blind spot and since there is a camera mounted on the left ORVM, it captures this blind spot while turning your car towards the left. The image comes clear on your 8 inches touch screen on the dash. This is a very helpful and meaningful feature.

The car has a large 7 inches high definition full colour TFT meter for multi-function driver information interface like trip meter, real-time fuel efficiency, digital speed and an innovative G-meter. This G-meter is basically the meter that measures the G-force and depending how hard you accelerate and corner, the G-force measurement shifts from 0.5G to the more aggressive 1.2G. Though we did not test this because of paucity of time, this feature is already there in models like the Honda Civic. But just for record’s sake you should realise that Formula One drivers usually experience 5 g while braking, 2 g while accelerating, and 4 to 6 g while cornering, according to information available on the net.

The moment you press the power on button, you get to see the two large circular dials for the tachometer and speedometer, apart from digital information like fuel level, speed, temperature, odometer, hand brake indication and seat belt indication. The tachometer dial further displays information like distance to fuel, average fuel consumption, trip meter reading, speed and time, G-meter, customise display etc. All this information can be seen with the help of the commander scroll switch.

Coming to the rear seat, these can seat three slim adults and there is an arm rest that can be put to use when two people are seated. The arm rest has two cup holders too. Separate AC blowers at the rear make a great sense for people seated there, especially in hot climes. For the third person sitting in the middle, there is a 3 point seat belt, very unlike a waste band like safety belt provided for the middle seat in many sedans. The car comes with a rear sun shade.

There are plenty of storage spaces in the car, with each of the door pockets accommodating a 1 litre bottle, the arm rest in front having space to store knick knacks and  front seat back pockets. Near the hand brake you get slots to keep you mobile phones, there is a large glove box with a tiny storage space next to it. The boot of the car has 506 litres of space.

The 2020 Honda City comes with a Push Start/ Stop button for engine. It has an electrical trunk lock with keyless release, Walkaway Auto Lock which is a segment first and remote Engine Start. Not to be missed is the electrically operated sun roof.

For the gizmo friendly, tech guys out there, it would be heartening for them as Honda City is India’s First connected car with Alexa remote capability. This lets customers conveniently interact with their car right from the comfort of their homes. The car is equipped with Next Generation Honda Connect with Telematics Control Unit that offer over 32 connected features. Customers can obtain a variety of information such as vehicle position and door lock status from a remote location. It also offers multiple functions such as Auto Crash Notification & Emergency Assistance, Stolen Vehicle Tracking, Security Alert, Geo-Fence Alert and many more.

The 8 inches touch screen infotainment system can help you select and adjust your radio, USB/ iPod, Bluetooth audio, phone, apps and not to forget your time date and day. It also doubles up as your navigation screen. With the help of the setting button you can set a plethora of function.  

ENGINE & PERFORMANCE:

The new Honda City will be offered in both petrol and diesel BS-6 engine options: The newly introduced 1.5L i-VTEC DOHC with VTC (Variable Valve Timing Control) petrol engine delivers decent fuel efficiency, low emission and spirited driving performance. The engine will be offered with an all new 6 speed manual transmission and new 7 speed CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) with “full-open acceleration step up-shift control” and “brake operation step down-shift control” for reduced rubber-band effect. We got to drive the cvt variant, There is also a 1.5L i-DTEC diesel engine  that comes with a 6 speed manual transmission with new sliding mesh type reverse gear for improved quietness.

In the Eco mode your car is not as aggressive as it is in the sport mode, because the ultimate purpose of Eco is to give you the best possible mileage. It’s best used when you want your driving to be sedate and pleasant. There is no apparent rubber-band effect which is usually the only drawback of a cvt. Thanks to improved technology, the drive is smooth and jerk free. The cabin is quiet and the NVH levels are close to perfection. The suspension is on the softer side but I have no qualms about it. It is perfect. The sport mode reveals the true power of the engine as the vehicle becomes a lot more aggressive in nature. Of course, you want to control all the gear changes, you can start using the paddle shifters in this sport mode. Paddle shifters come handy when you want to hold the car in a particular gear for more power (like going up a hill) or coming down a steep road, or you want to drive faster or more aggressively. Paddle shifters are typically the manual way of driving an automatic car. Else the normal D mode and the S mode are good driving modes.

This model of the new Honda City comes with a lot of safety features. Apart from the fact that this car is ASEAN N-CAP 5-star safety rating equivalent, it is made of an ultra high tensile strength steel frame, has 6 airbags – Dual Front SRS airbags, Front seat Side airbags and Side curtain airbags, Vehicle Stability Assist with Agile Handling Assist, Hill Start Assist , tyre Pressure Monitoring System, Lane Watch Camera, etc.

VERDICT

The new Honda City is now a lot contemporary in all respects, whether it is styling, cabin comfort, utilities, engine performance, suspension and braking. But the real icing on the cake are the tech features incorporated in the car, whether it is the infotainment system related, the safety or the performance of the engine. It’s now ready to rule the streets once again, the Honda City way!