Honda India will officially unveil the fourth generation City on the 25th of November. Honda hasn’t considered the Indian market as a third world economy and have updated their vehicles in regular intervals on par with other established markets in the past decade since their entry into the country. Though Honda has less number of dealerships when compared with the market giant Maruti Suzuki, the customer friendly and hassle free service has given a lot of confidence to the Indian customers for this brand.
The City was the first car launched by Honda in the Indian market and it has caught the attention of the Indian masses and has sold in large volumes with its reliable performance. Though it had only a petrol engine, Honda has sold the City with more than 2000 units volume every month and it was the best selling petrol sedan in the past decade. After the launch of the Amaze, many expected that the present generation City would come with the oil burner but Honda doesn’t want to dump the oil burner in the present generation car as it was not designed for this purpose.
The news about the global unveil of the next generation City has garnered the required amount of hype within a short span of time. The main reason for the huge hype garnered for the next-gen City is it is going to be launched for the first time in the Indian market with a diesel engine. The diesel powertrain will be the same engine taken from the Amaze with some minor tweaks to obtain higher torque and power figures. Though Honda has launched the diesel engine with the Amaze in April, there were many existing as well as new customers who have been eagerly waiting for the City with an oil burner. The outgoing City is an excellent car in terms of performance but it lacks in features and standard equipment which are standard in other C-segment sedans.
The next generation Honda City will be based on the new Jazz platform and we can except some goodies like automatic climate control, projector headlamps, increased cabin space as well as an enlarged boot. We can also expect class leading features as well as safety equipment. The new car will be bigger than the outgoing model and let us expect Honda to price it competitively like the Amaze. This will be the first car to debut in India with Honda’s new H-design philosophy. Honda might also introduce a new turbo petrol engine in this car which was showcased in Tokyo recently.
So to sum up, the 2014 Honda City will boast of bigger dimensions, increased interior room, better dynamics (remember the new Jazz was benchmarked against the Volkswagen Polo), more features and better performance (i-DTEC engine gives a very good blend of performance and economy). All this will make the Honda City better in many aspects and that is bound to spell doom for competitors.
