Will the new City facelift be able to add color to the faded path of Honda Car India?

New Delhi, Ankit Dubey. A decade ago, there was a time when Honda Cars India’s cars used to dominate the market. There used to be a different smile on the face of the customers as soon as they entered the showrooms of Honda. Honda showrooms jam-packed with different models of vehicles really used to compel the customers to spend hours and then buy the car. As the years passed, new technologies and stricter emission norms kept coming into the Indian car market. Now in such a situation, Honda could not handle itself and soon Hyundai, Maruti and Mahindra defeated Honda due to service network, car models, technology and price.

The time also came when Honda started making changes in its vehicles like other car companies, but with those changes, lakhs of rupees also started increasing and in such a situation, customers started liking the cars of other car companies. At that time other car companies were also increasing the prices of cars but not as much as Honda. Honda made major changes in all three vehicles City, Civic and CRV, but today only City won the race of these three and the company was forced to discontinue Civic and CRV and due to this, in the year December 2020, Honda had to retire its 23 year old The Greater Noida plant, which had an annual capacity to manufacture 1 lakh cars, also had to be shut down. However, the company’s Alwar plant is still operational. A plant closed, rumors started spreading that the company was leaving the country. There was a stir in the dealer network. The movement of customers at the showrooms started decreasing. Vehicle sales went down and people started looking for alternatives to Honda.

SUV attack but first changes in City

Now if a customer visits Honda showrooms, he gets to see only Amaze, WRV, Jazz, fourth generation City and fifth generation City. Now people are not that much interested in Amaze. Not only this, no one even asks about WRV and Jazz anymore. Lastly, there is the Honda City which is a really great car. There is a dearth of features but the performance, ride, handling, steering inputs make the customers very happy. For this reason, Honda also started focusing only on City and last year launched e:HEV i.e. Strong Hybrid engine with a petrol, diesel engine which comes with very good technology and here this step of Honda is really commendable. Was. Although, now Maruti Suzuki and Toyota have also brought this technology in their SUVs, but Honda started it. It has been almost 10 months since the arrival of Honda City e:HEV and the company had created a ruckus to bring a new SUV in this whole 10 months, but in March 2023, the company again brought the facelift avatar of the new Honda City in which the diesel engine was removed. . Earlier, ADAS level 2 features were available only with the Strong Hybrid, nothing in the lower variants. In such a situation, Honda City e:HEV started getting good response from the people and the share of diesel engine sales decreased considerably and now diesel is missing from City. However, the lack of features was still visible to Honda, due to which the company has now tried to fulfill that with the new City.

Will not be happy with the quality of rear parking camera
Two engines – a normal petrol and a strong hybrid, both manual and automatic transmission options with ADAS and minor exterior changes. The interiors too get changed upholstery colour, carbon fiber finish on the dashboard and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. This is the only change the company has made. Which is just fine, but the quality of the rear parking camera and side camera is not the same. The camera quality is still as bad as it was before. There is no change. Understand that the quality of the rear camera of Hyundai Grand i10 Nios is better than this. Now think for yourself, after spending 15-20 lakh rupees, if you see this deficiency, what will you do? It is obvious that if you want to buy City, then you will find aftermarket option or keep giving your feedback to Honda. At this price, you are getting 360 degree parking camera in other vehicles, that too with tremendous quality.

Honda City ahead only in Strong Hybrid
Now there is another challenge with the new Honda City, the new generation Hyundai Verna in front, which will really leave the City far behind in terms of looks and features. However, the City’s Honda sensing and strong hybrid powertrain is still a big plus point. Now the question is whether to buy the new Honda City or wait for the Hyundai Verna or go ahead and choose one of the two. So the answer to the question is quite simple. If you are buying normal petrol City then don’t buy, Hyundai Verna will give you better design and better features. But if you want to buy a strong hybrid, then Honda City will be a better option for you because with this powertrain you really get better mileage and great performance.

Not only this, ride quality and steering feedback are also seen tremendously. However, the great ride quality of the Honda City also has one big minus point that if you have 4 in the car and a lot of luggage, the car seems to slide down on the big breakers.

Highest service cost
Look, Honda City will compete with the new Hyundai Verna in the Indian market, as well as Skoda Slavia and Volkswagen Virtus. Now compared to these three vehicles, the service cost of Honda City seems to be very high.