AutoCar India's artist impression is pretty close to what the actual City will look like.
Second generation Jazz. Image from Kah Motor Singapore.
As far as design is concerned, there is nothing much to write about here. The car is already launched in Thailand and Singapore. In Japan, the Jazz (sold as Fit) is currently the best selling car, dethroning the traditional salaryman's favourite - the Toyota Corolla. You can download Singapore Jazz's brochure here. Ignore the 1.3-litre version and what you see there is pretty much the same car that we will be getting. I say pretty much because if I am not mistaken the current Singapore's Jazz is sourced from Japan (with a JDM 1.4-litre engine) while ours are from Thailand.
In Singapore, the entry level second-generation Jazz starts at SGD 65k, about SGD 4k about the top of the range outgoing City model. While in Thailand, the new Jazz starts at 560k Thai Baht, which about 85k Thai Baht lower than the top of the range outgoing City model.
As you might have already know, both the City (Fit Aria in Japan) and Jazz (Fit), which are built on the same Honda Global Small platform sharing the same powertrain. The previous generation Jazz and City (outgoing model) were offered with two different engine options (i-DSi and i-VTEC) which as I have said before in an earlier entry does not make any business sense. I am glad that Honda has stopped practising this as I think it is counter-productive in expanding your product's market penetration to new buyer segments. The new Jazz and City will be offered with a more logical engine line-up - only 1.5-litre L15A SOHC i-VTEC for Malaysia and Thailand while Singapore is getting an additional option of a 1.3-litre L13A SOHC i-VTEC. The engines are largely carried over from the previous model but with slight improvement in power output (+ 10 bhp for the 1.5-litre).
However, I am disappointed to find out that the CVT transmission from the previous model has been dropped in favour of a standard 5-speed automatic with manual override (F1-wanabe paddle shifters). I am disappointed because the outgoing Jazz and City (with CVTs) are clearly the superior product compared to Toyota's equivalent of Vios and Yaris. The differences in sales figures to me are due to brand recognition, marketing and company management, not the products. In fact I will go as far as saying that product wise, there is no comparison between them. It's almost an entirely different animal. But of course diplomatic motoring journos can't write that or risked being banned from any future test drive models. But I am an independent blogger. So...
The video below is a brief overview of the second-gen Jazz / Fit. The model shown here is a US market model (note the US regulation amber lense turn signals).
The previous Jazz and City achieved such outstanding fuel economy partly because of its CVT transmission. With the CVT being dropped, expect slightly less smooth driving experience and poorer fuel economy - as found out by Thai journos from Bangkok Post during their test drive. I am not sure if the early glitches related to Honda's CVT in the region have anything to do with this decision but to me its a step backwards. The problems with CVTs on early City and Jazz have been sorted out and the only people who go around saying CVTs are fragile and expensive to repair are Toyota salesmen and other ignorant people who can't read the service schedule in their owner's manual. If this is not the reason, then I think it has to be down to cost as Jazz (Fit) sold in Japan continue to be offered with CVTs. Steel prices have been rising and automakers are not immune to it, yet consumers expect not to pay any higher prices for their cars. Something has to give.
Moving on to the City. Thai automotive blog BKK Autos have revealed some details. Engine and transmission will be same as the Jazz (1.5 i-VTEC and 5-speed automatic). In Thailand, the City will be offered in 4 main variants - base S, V AT (single airbag), V AT SRS (dual airbags) and the top of the range SV. Like the Vios, base and mid-range S and V models will have beige interiors while the high-specs SV will have black interior. Exclusive specs for SV models are wing-mirror mounted indicators, front fog lamps and paddle shifters.
I expect the grade line-up for Malaysian market City to be more or less similar to Thailand, but the model line-up for Jazz should be substantially less than Thailand due to our smaller market size. My guess is that we will only adopt the mid and high range models from Thailand.
ASEAN market TVC for the outgoing City / Fit Aria.
There are rumours that the new City will also be exported to Australia and sold as the Fit Aria. Also, a hybrid version of the Jazz might debut by 2011. However some sources say it is more likely to be introduced by the 3rd generation Jazz in 2015.
Related post:
Jazz launched.
2009 Honda City - First Images
More pictures of 2008 Honda City
2008 Honda City - unmasked, with interior shots
3 comments:
My Honda City/Aria rendering:
http://area75.com.ar/cardesign/2008/08/10/honda-city-aria-2009/
Jorge L. Fernández
area75 car design
http://www.area75.com.ar/cardesign/
I just want to add to the well made comments about the CVT not being used on the Jazz sold in Europe. I believe that the CVT tranmission will still be sold in Japan.
I have owned two Honda Jazz 1.4 SE CVT-7 both from new - a 2003 and my current a facelift 2005 model.
The first car covered 65000 miles before having issues that may or may not have been transmission related. My current Jazz is at 83000 miles and has no problems.
Regarding the CVT. It is a perfect partner to the Jazz and the iDSI engine. In cruising the CVT equiped car is as quiet as many mid- or high- range cars and is incompariable with the manual transmission car which is very noisy.
If you have a manual Jazz then to understand the noise level comparison drive a 1.4 iDSi 5-speed manual Jazz on level ground at 40 MPH in 5th gear. This is what the CVT-7 Jazz is like at 60 MPH. In fact most noise in the CVT equiped Jazz comes not from the engine by from tyre noise.
Advice: I recommend CVT drivers to use the quiet Yokohama C-Drive tyres - manual drivers might as well not bother - you won't hear a difference :)
I think the CVT-7 works really well because it is partnered with an ideal engine - the iDSI engine.
I can't be absolutely sure whether this is also true for the iVTEC powered version because it was not sold in the UK prior to the 2008 model.
After more than 140000 miles of Jazz CVT driving, I think the reason why the CVT-7 works so well in the Jazz is because it benefits from the torque bump that the iDSI engine gives out at 1800 rpm.
To understand the usefulness of this you need to think a little differently about acceleration. In non-CVT cars, manual or automatic ones, you have a series of gears at different ratios used to gain speed. Petrol (and diesel) engines have relatively narrow torque generating engine speeds so by using this "torque band" to turn gears with different speed multiplying factors you get progressively faster. Each higher gear chosen however means the engine can provide less and less torque to the wheels and this is why you have to change to a lower gear to climb hills, etc.
So in order to accelerate, or slow down you use a combination of selected gear and accelerator position. All sounds familiar.
Imagine you are accelerating from rest on a flat road and you are driving a manual Jazz (or non-cvt automatic), you are also interesting in fuel efficiency so are aware you must keep the engine speed low, but you also understand by forcing the engine to provide torque at too slow an engine speed will "labour" it and cause premature wear. You select first gear, you slip the clutch (or the torque converter does this in the automatic) and move off. You have used the clutch to get your stopped car to a speed where road-speed matches idle speed in first gear. You are aware in your iDSi engine that the maximum useable torque drops off above 2800 rpm, you are also aware of a slight bump of torque at 1800 rpm.
You accelerate with the aim to select second gear at the moment where road speed permits selection of second gear. This will be the moment at which the engine would be turning about idle speed plus an amount to cope with losses in efficiency by using a qear ratio higher then that of first. You do a simiar thing to change to third, forth and fifth. You are now travelling about 45 mph and the engine is turning about 2000 rpm.
So each gear change you would have accelerated with the engine speeed increasing to a point where the change occured.
OK. You are in a CVT Jazz now. It's sitting still. Your foot is on the brake and you select Drive mode on the gearbox. So long as your foot is on the brake the start clutch will pulse the engine's output at a frequency that it will be ready to move the car gently forward on releasing the footbrake. You release the brake and select an efficient engine speed - since you'd like to match that of other traffic but still drive efficiently you choose 2000 rpm. The car will accelerate in speed but the engine speed will remain at 2000 rpm. You finally reach the maximum road speed under flat conditions that 2000 rpm will achieve. This is approximately 60 MPH.
So we have a difference: 2000 rpm in the manual is 45 mph and 2000 rpm in the CVT is 60 mph. And that's why it's nicer when you are cruising. The manual would have had an engine speed of nearly 3000 rpm for 60 MPH.
Before you suddenly all go for the CVT - oops you can't now - you have to understand taht CVT can be noisy too and feel slower to accelerate.
Now when I say noisy what I mean is that you get used to crusing at 60 MPH at 2000rpm so that when you start to require torque because your starting to climb a hill then engine starts to speed up possibly getting as high as 3000 rpm. Terrible you cry - so noisy!
However all that has happened is that the CVT has had to change through multiple ratios to keep the road speed the same and to achieve maximum torque and this is at 2800 rpm in the Jazz. Remember that the manual would have had an engine speed of 3000rpm all the time even when you were on the flat and didn't not require the torque being provided by the extra fuel being consumed. So, actually, it's no noiser than the manual car when under load.
Next, it feels slower and less sporty. It does feel that way but that's not what the speedometer shows. We have learnt to associate certain feelings when we accelerate to achieve maximum speed in the shortest time. When this is attempted in a CVT the tranmission will choose to hold the engine speed at a speed that provides maximum power and transition the CVT system through a ratio sequence that achieves fastest acceleration. This sounds and feels completely contrary to what we are used to as drivers.
In fact what manual (and non-CVT automatic) drivers are used to is surges of power with flat spots either side of the surges as the engine is below and above its power band.
Surely then the Jazz with its holding the engine at maximum power and using ideal ratio progression would out accelerate the manual car?
Well no. And this is more to do with the decisions made by the computer controlling the transmission: there are reasons such as tranmission wear protection and so forth that might not be on the mind of an over-enthusiastic driver. These are however on the mind of the computer.
The truth is the Jazz is not a racing car. There are plenty of CVT racing cars winning races to prove what they are capable of when programmed for speed. The Jazz's CVT is tuned for efficiency and long life.
So if it so good why is Honda dropping it. Well, I do blame the motoring press, Honda's lack of advertising, and sales persons lack of training, but I also blame the car buying public's perceptions of what an automatic is.
We have the opinion that an automatic car is not as good a manual one because as drivers we can't control gear choices. I argue however why should we. There are plenty of very good reasons why people are not the best judges of a complex system. In fact by the human being a part of the decision making process, the overall system is less efficient. As a driver we cannot feel the pressures on the engine with the speed and attentiveness that the engine can itself.
In fact if the car knows how much load is on it or not then it can make decisions about what ratio to select. And, because it has many ratios and not 5 or 6 or 7 but in fact hundreds of in-between gears (Constantly Varying Transmission), it is always in the right gear.
Add to this the computer monitoring of the throttle postion requests made by the driver, temperature sensors, electrical loading sensors, and so on, the CVT can be made to provide engine braking too.
For conventional automatic drivers this is something of a new thing - the idea of the car changing to a lower gear automatically because you are decending a hill doesn't generally happen!
In the CVT it does happen, because when decending a hill the computer is monitoring the fact that road speed is increasing but the driver is intuitively backing off the throttle, or has removed their foot, i.e. we're going too fast, so here the CVT decreases the ratio causing engine speed to increase but without fuel makes the engine act as an air pump causing engine braking and the car to slow down all without needing the footbrake.
I could go on and on and on about the CVT and why it is technology all of us should have in our cars. For Honda Jazz, I could add the cleverness of iDSI's twin spark plugs per cylinder which allowed torque provision to the CVT to keep engine speeds around town to around idle speed without engine labouring - i.e. low emissions, low fuel use, etc, etc.
Sorry if you did want a new CVT car from Honda then it's too late for you to have a Jazz. You could get it in the Civic Hybrid though. I've driven that and it's wonderful. Hopefully the economic downturn doesn't stop Honda's new Insight hybrid/CVT car.
So if you want a non-hybrid CVT then your choices are limited and it certainly won't be a Honda. I can't comment on the quality of the CVT implementation but there is Nissan's huge Quasqai SUV thing and Mercedes A-class.
CVT victims of the market this year: Ford Focus, BMW Mini, Nissan Note... and now Honda Jazz (R.I.P)
On a positive note if you go to a Honda dealer until early 2009 you'll probably still be able to get a brand new pre-2008 model 1.4 iDSi CVT-7 Honda Jazz - you won't be disappointed.
dunkv,
Yea I did mentioned (confirmed with Honda JP materials) that CVTs continue to be sold in JDM Fits.
Personally I am all for CVTs and the disconcerting rev and powerband effect does not bother me at all, I mean, it is to be expected right (duh).
Appreciate your tire recommendations and all but I think your observations are pretty much Euro-centric. Us in SEA region gets a different engine specs (1.5-litre) and our tropical weather tires have an entirely different compound and noise performance. Most of the contents here are targetted at Thai, Singapore, Malaysia and sometimes Australia market.
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