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Road test review: Honda Jazz Life

Saturday, 4 September 2021

The entry point to the Jazz range is priced more like a mid-spec model but misses out on some crucial kit.
The entry point to the Jazz range is priced more like a mid-spec model but misses out on some crucial kit.
The interior is plasticky but the two-spoke steering wheel is nice and the air-con controls are beautifully tactile.
The interior is plasticky but the two-spoke steering wheel is nice and the air-con controls are beautifully tactile.
The Honda Jazz e:HEV has three drive modes, and the petrol engine only actually drives the wheels in one of them.

The Jazz Life represents the new entry point to the Jazz range. It’s priced more like a mid-range small car, closer to $30,000 than $25,000, so let’s find out if it acts like one too.

The Life might miss out on safety gubbins, but it remains an incredibly easy car to, er, live with.
The Life might miss out on safety gubbins, but it remains an incredibly easy car to, er, live with.

What sort of kit do you get… or not get?

Starting with the mechanicals, the Life gets the same 1.5-litre naturally aspirated four-cylinder petrol engine/CVT combination as the Crosstar, producing an identical 89kW/145Nm. Not mind-blowing figures, but plenty for a little city hatchback.

It doesn’t look big, but there’s a surprising amount of room inside.
It doesn’t look big, but there’s a surprising amount of room inside.

**READ MORE:

* Sunday drive: Toyota C-HR GR Sport

* Honda's all-new and electrified Jazz is here

The little 1.5-litre four-cylinder isn’t a firecracker but it’s great on fuel and powerful enough for the Jazz.
The little 1.5-litre four-cylinder isn’t a firecracker but it’s great on fuel and powerful enough for the Jazz.

* Road test review: Toyota Yaris Cross

**

With sales favouring the hybrid Jazz, we’d love to see more electrified Jazz models on offer here.
With sales favouring the hybrid Jazz, we’d love to see more electrified Jazz models on offer here.

Fuel consumption is, as you’d expect, about as low as it gets for this sort of powertrain at 5.8L/100km, which is pretty easy to replicate in the real world. Not quite as good as the hybrid, though.

The Life doesn’t get the Crosstar’s specially tuned suspension or steering, but it does get Honda’s Agile Handling Assist, which helps retain traction during cornering by gently using the brakes. There's also a reversing camera with dynamic guidelines.

You also miss out on things like automatic headlights and wipers while gaining a rather plasticky interior, and a short active safety list. Only the Jazz e:HEV Luxe gets the full Sensing safety kit, with the Life making do with electronic stability control, traction control, emergency brake assist (which isn’t autonomous emergency braking)… and that’s about it. Going off the spec-sheet, Life models don’t even get a built-in alarm, making do with an immobiliser security system.

Creature comforts include single-zone climate control, walk-away locking, an electric parking brake, old-school non-adaptive cruise control and a digital infotainment system with wireless Apple CarPlay and wired Android Auto.

So, what’s it like?

Well, like the other Jazz model we’ve tested, the Life is incredibly easy to live with. Funny that. The amount of forward vision is fantastic, thanks to a panoramic windscreen, and there’s very little adjustment needed in the cabin to get comfortable. There’s also a digital dash that’s easy to decipher.

If you need to cart around some adult friends, they won’t be too unhappy in the back seats. Unless they’re enormous, they won’t be pushing their knees into the back of the front seats too much, or scraping their heads on the roof.

There’s plenty of storage, with four cupholders up front, more than 300L of storage capacity in the boot and Honda’s Magic Seats, which fold forward and down to offer a huge amount of space for the car’s footprint.

How about driving?

Despite having a vanilla powertrain, the Life is still pleasant enough to drive. There’s torque from about 2000rpm and, with little throttle input, the CVT is quick to drop revs to save fuel. Give it some gas and the little hatch will bring itself up to 50 or 100kmh without much issue. Sure it’s not the most emotive transmission in the world, but it does its duty nicely.

The steering isn’t overly assisted and while the suspension isn’t any sort of groundbreaking design – torsion beam at the rear and MacPherson struts up front – the Jazz Life still handles as well as you’d expect, particularly around town.

So the Life then presents a bit of a conundrum. It’s priced as if it were a mid-range model, but the included kit puts it closer to a base model. However, it’s priced at the mid-range level and some parts of the Jazz’s make-up are better than the competition, like its physical size and engine.

Shouldn’t there be more hybrid options for this day and age?

Perhaps. Toyota certainly thinks so, and Honda does actually offer more e:HEV Jazz variants in Japan, including an all-wheel drive version of the Crosstar. Maybe, in the future, Honda New Zealand will expand the Jazz line-up to include more hybrids. We certainly wouldn’t complain.

But hybrids are still seen by some as new and a bit alarming, and Honda knows its demographic, even though the e:HEV isn't really that complicated to drive. In fact, it's incredibly simple, you just let the car’s brain figure out when it can run on electric power only and when the petrol engine needs to chime in.

Plus, Honda has sold 330 e:HEVs between March and August, compared to 157 Lifes and 275 Crosstars. Surely that gives some ground for an e:HEV Life, at least, which could offer more competition for Toyota’s Yaris range. It would probably require a pricing overhaul, though.

Any other cars I should consider?

The closest competitor is the Suzuki Swift RS ($27,990), which gets a full active safety set-up, including adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warning, and rear cross-traffic alert. It also has the 1.0-litre Boosterjet engine, producing 82kW/160Nm, down on the Jazz, but paired with a six-speed automatic.

Up until recently, we would have also included the $25,990 Toyota Yaris GX here, but it seems that stock shortages have made that a bit of a rarity at the moment, so the closest current Toyota competitor is the Yaris GX Hybrid, which starts at $29,290 and offers a far more comprehensive package than the base Jazz.