Jazz Right

Remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? When our girl Goldie intruded into the house of the Bear family, she sat on their chairs, sampled their porridge and slept on their beds. Through her sampling, she found Papa Bear’s things as "too hard, too hot or too large" and Mama Bear’s stuff as "too soft or too cold" while she found Baby Bear’s chair, food and bed as "just right".

Honda Cars Philippines, Inc. (HCPI) may have found a car that’s "just right" for its intended market. The new Honda Jazz 1.3 comes in at exactly the right size, with exactly the right engine at exactly the right time. Oh, did I mention that it also came with exactly the right look? Please allow me to explain.

Basically, the Honda Jazz uses the same platform as the current Honda City sub-compact with the exception of the mid-mounted fuel tank and the 5-door body configuration. Thus, the Jazz’s external dimensions are nearly identical with the City’s and makes it ideal for our pothole-infested streets narrowed by constant diggings, illegal parking and impossibly chaotic traffic.

However, the Jazz’s hatchback body extends the rear roofline to make it a more useful transporter of people and stuff. The City’s Utility/Long/Tall (ULT) seating arrangement is far more useful in the Jazz with the gymnastic foldable rear seats working well with the wagon-like roofline to maximize the space usage when transporting cargo, especially tall ones and long ones. In the front, the Jazz adds a useful and long parcel tray below the dashboard that serves as a place to store things like sunglasses or driving glasses, cell phones and chargers, chips, canned snacks and drinks, bottled water or whatever you need to while out the time while you sit in traffic.

Once the traffic clears, though, the intelligent dual spark fuel-injected (i-DSI) 16-valve 1300cc four-cylinder engine moves the Jazz with just enough torque and power to keep it out of harm’s way. In our initial road test/press conference/junket of the new Honda Jazz in Tagaytay City, it performed admirably along city streets and zoomed ahead of vehicles with bigger displacements when pressed on the highway. Some of my esteemed media colleagues would like to see the new 1500cc VTEC engine of the City 1.5 installed in the Jazz and concurred that such a combination will endear Honda to many boy racers and those aspiring to be one.

But I digress. I felt that the power of the 1.3 i-DSI is perfectly suited for the type of driving that future owners of the Jazz will be accustomed to. Whether with a 5-speed manual gearbox or the 7-speed Steermatic constantly variable transmission (CVT) automatic (highly recommended!), the 1.3-liter motor is a quick-revving power plant that is plain fun to drive and powerful enough to harness the benefits of the Jazz’s grippy suspension system. And it’s very economical, sipping fossil fuel at an almost unbelievably slow rate that you’d think the fuel gauge was broken! Full to the brim when we left the Intercon in Makati, the fuel gauge needle didn’t move when we got to Tagaytay, even if we were sometimes revving the engine up and driving a little beyond the speed limit along the route.

Experiencing this economical operation first hand led me to the idea that the Honda Jazz came at the just right time. With the choking combination of escalating fuel prices and the always-mentioned-but-still-unresolved chaotic traffic, the Jazz’s 1.3-liter engine is exactly the right tool for commuting economically around the metropolis and the suburbs. Cars with big engines will soon be relegated to weekend driving duties and nimble econoboxes like the Jazz will become more fashionable for daily use.

And fashionable, the Jazz is. No more "ugly" jokes for this baby, HCPI had enough of those with the City. With the Jazz, Honda could finally say "it’s got the right look" and say it with pizzazz. The tapering hatchback roofline transforms this platform into an integrated design, with the front gracefully guiding the eye to the roof and tapering over into the back completing the uh, jazzed-up look with the hatch surrounded by those smart-looking tail lamp clusters. With new vivid colors, the Jazz looks hot in red, cool in blue and, dare we say, chic in silver or gray. Just like a European econobox. Suffice to say, it looks just right.

I once wrote in a previous review that with its excellent ergonomics, the interior of the Honda City is an environment I’d like to be in. I also criticized the exterior and felt that the design polarizes people into love-it-or-hate-it factions, and I for one, wouldn’t like to be seen in it. However, with the new Honda Jazz, I find the overall design pleasing and this is affirmed by the overall impression of people who saw it and found it "nice", "cute" or "just right". Undoubtedly, Honda finally came up with a winner in the economical sub-compact car class. And it can be a winner much more so if they price the Jazz just right.

Editor’s Note: The Honda Jazz was officially launched by Honda Cars Philippines Inc. yesterday at The Manila Peninsula in Makati City — which means that the wait is over. You can take a look the Honda Jazz yourself at any Honda dealer beginning today. We suggest that you do. It’ll be worth your while.