Four doors vs five.
Attached to Carsguide’s first drive piece on Honda’s City mini, is a comment from a reader who writes of his excitement at the imminent arrival of what is – on the face of it – a fairly futile model.
"I always thought the Honda was something I could not afford,” the reader, one Mr Alan Gordon, says.
He could, of course, have bought a Honda Jazz – which is all of 50mm shorter, but altogether more practical and cheaper. Or a Honda Civic for just north of the same dough, but more of that anon …
Thing is though (and, yes, I’m just guessing here), because the Jazz is a hatch, it’s somehow not a legitimate car in this guy’s eyes. No … a `proper’ car has to have four doors and boot.
That’s why the City is a hit with the burgeoning middle classes of Thailand (where the car is built) and India – it’s a first step toward bourgeois respectability.
It’s also why Honda over here are banking that it will catch former Falcodore people who recognise the desirability of downsizing, but simply can’t countenance the notion of being seen in anything other than a sedan.
This is not to mock Mr Gordon of Noble Park - or Mr Chaiyanuchit of Bangkok, or Mr Choudrey of Mumbai.
We could also point to the fact that whole continents stand opposed in this matter of five doors versus four – all of Europe prefers a hatch while in Japan and the Americas, it has to be a sedan.
If this proves anything it’s that perception is not simply a factor when we make what is for most of us the second biggest purchase decision next our place of residence property.
No, perception is increasingly the only factor.
In a country where licenses are issued with the implicit understanding that you will go forth and be a source of revenue for the state by way of excessive fines for trivial infringements coupled with multifarious (and nefarious) fees, the feel good factor (however illusory) is the only one that really counts anymore.
You can’t drive as fast as your father did (even though your car is 10 times safer) because you’ll lose your licence. Your car might be a track day tornado, but what matters dynamism on public roads as rough as you’ll find in the Third World?
Nor in that context, does it matter, especially, if the Honda City manual we’re driving this week doesn’t quite stack up by objective criteria next to the Jazz, to say nothing of the Mazda2 and – we’re told – Ford’s new Fiesta.
And starting as it does from $20,490, the City can’t be considered especially clever next to the marginally more expensive and only slightly thirstier, but bigger and better Honda Civic (another Thai special).
And while an Electronic Stability Program is to be had in the latter (or VSA in Honda-speak), in the place where that button really ought to be in the City, there’s nothing but a hard plastic cover.
While that sticks in the craw (anyone who says ESP needn’t be standard understands nothing of its function), against that the City is everything it is purported to be – a Honda-quality device in an affordable, four-door package.
Wouldn’t buy it myself, but thousands will. And it’s easy to see why.
